Promotion of Participatory Irrigation Management Is the Orientation of Irrigation District Reform

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Promotion of Participatory Irrigation Management
Is the Orientation of Irrigation District Reform

• Feng Guangzhi, Director, China Irrigation
  District Association

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The Fundamental Way for Solving the Problems of
Irrigation District Management System Is to
Promote Participatory Irrigation Management
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• There are 402 large irrigation districts (The
  irrigated area for each is more than 20,000 ha),
  5600 medium irrigation districts (The irrigated
  area for each is between 660ha-20,000 ha) and
  about 10 million small irrigation districts(The
  irrigated area is less than 660 ha) in China. The
  present policies are The Main engineering above
  branch canals in large irrigation districts is
  constructed by government investment and run by
  professional management agencies subordinated to
  government. The engineering below sublateral
  canals is constructed by village collectives and
  farmers, and run by townships and villages.
  Irrigation district is facing three troubles,
  while playing a great role in promotion and
  assurance of agriculture production

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1. Inadequate hardware

• Low engineering design standard.

Such as no lining where it should be lined, no
adequate constructions and water measuring
facilities where it should have.

• Poor field corollary engineering

The main engineering in many irrigation districts
has been completed, and the field engineering,
which is required to be constructed by township
and village collectives as well as farmers, can
not be long-term matched which is called
Half-dragged Engineering due to their limited
capacity.
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2. Improper management system and lack of
initiatives in operation mechanism

• Insufficient maintenance and management fund.

The water charge in most of the irrigation
districts is only 1/3 to 2/3 of water supply
cost. In addition to that, the water fee can not
be collected completed. So many engineering can
not get maintenance timely.

• Unclear responsibilities of maintenance and
  management.

There is lack of clear definition on who owns the
field engineering and who will be responsible for
the management. Many facilities are used, but
nobody is responsible for the management.
According to a investigation conducted in early
90s, about 1/3 of the facilities are damaged and
aging, which have impacts on the functioning of
irrigation district services.
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3. Short of water resources

• In northern areas, the contradictions between
  industry and agriculture, between cities and
  countryside are prominent. Due to the limitations
  of irrigation districts engineering and technical
  capacity, water use efficiency is low, it is
  0.4-0.5 for irrigation purposes in many
  irrigation districts. Water waste is very common.

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The measures for solving the above issues are

• for the inadequate hardware, it relies on
  increasing government input and encourage more
  and more water users participate the construction
  and management to increase the labor and money
  input. Chinese government has increased input in
  this field in recent years.
• The second is to promoting water-saving practices
  to improve water use efficiency and alleviate the
  contradictions of supply and demand.
• That the State requires all irrigation districts
  to take water-saving as a key task to promote
  also need water users participation. The third
  is to make the ownership and management
  responsibilities clear by establishing water
  users association.

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• Practice shows that government should give strong
  and powerful support to the constructed
  facilities of irrigation districts. For
  management aspect, it needs water users
  participation in field engineering management.
  With the accumulation of experiences and mature
  of conditions, water users can take most of the
  responsibilities.

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Issues and Discussions
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1. Accurately understand and master the means of
PIM

• Somebody thinks that Participatory Irrigation
  Management is not a new thing, it has been
  practiced in many irrigation districts. In my
  view, the degree of PIM is different. The former
  partici-pation is passive in some means. The key
  intention of PIM what we are talking is to make
  the water users become the owners of irrigation
  districts. With the transfer of management
  property, the property rights of facilities
  should be further clearly. The power and
  responsibilities of professional management
  agencies and WUAs should be clearly defined.
  This is innovative reform to old management
  system. The views that conducting PIM or not is
  not important should be changed.

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2. Promote PIM Gradually

• PIM reform has close relations with rural
  operation management system, farmers benefits,
  government at root levels and professional
  management agencies, etc. It concerns laws,
  policies and etc. Pilot demonstration should be
  carried out first to summarize experiences and
  educate administrators at root level by using the
  pilot examples. At present, PIM in China is in
  the period of pilot demonstration. Active
  attitudes should be taken in promoting reform and
  eyes should be put on actual effects. Formalism
  and notice numbers of WUAs should be avoided.

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3. Government support should be in position

• The responsibilities of government is increased,
  but not reduced when part of the management
  responsibilities is transferred to WUAs. Fro
  example, government needs to subsidy some fund to
  farmers for improvement of upstream and
  downstream, two sides of bank, reasonable
  allocation of water resources, training and
  guiding on changing irrigation methods, etc. to
  those poor corollary engineering and damaged
  facilities. Government can not have the thoughts
  of Leaving Burdens.

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4. Properly coordinate the relationships of
alleviating farmers burden and achieving WUAs
operation in good economic cycle.

• The papers submitted in this seminar, it has
  referred that farmers burden on water charge has
  been reduced after the establishment of WUAs. We
  should do analysis objectively to that. Less
  water fee at present period results from the
  reduction of over middle management agencies as
  well as other fee collection and extra charges.
  From a long view, water charge burden will
  increase if WUAs really want to run their own
  facilities well. In the past, the professional
  management agencies subordinated to government
  required farmers to hand in more water fees. But
  now, farmers must solve their own business. The
  feature of the two situation has been changed
  fundamentally.

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5. The issue of WUAs legal position

• Only when WUAs have legal positions, it can get
  protection of laws and bear tasks in accordance
  with laws. This is the basic distinguishing of
  WUAs and the loosen farmers organization in the
  past. Now many WUAs are still not registered. In
  fact, that the Law of Villagers Self-management
  and many policy documents in advocating farmers
  to establish farmers specific association has
  showed governments attitude. The regulations and
  policies should improved as soon as possible to
  solve WUAs legal position.

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6. WUA should have strict management regulations
and implement democratic management

• Although WUA is very small, as a society
  organization, there must be strict regulations
  and management measures and it must be operated
  in accordance with them. In order to practices
  like this, trainings to WUAs and farmers must be
  enhanced to improve their quality holistically.

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THANKS