Group dynamics effectiveness of water user associations under different irrigation systems in an eastern Indian state

2010 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 559-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Souvik Ghosh ◽  
Ashwani Kumar ◽  
Prabhakar Nanda ◽  
P.S.B. Anand
Keyword(s):  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Irrigation Systems ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Water User ◽  
Indian State

Sustaining participation in irrigation systems of Ethiopia: what have we learned about water user associations?

Water Policy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 961-984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mastewal Yami
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Irrigation Systems ◽  
Project Staff ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Water User ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Irrigation Projects

Community participation, defined as engaging users of schemes in the decision-making processes for the planning and implementation of irrigation projects, is critical for the sustainability of irrigation schemes. This study was carried out in three regional states of Ethiopia to investigate the contribution of water user associations (WUAs) to sustaining participation in irrigation projects. The paper demonstrates that the poor understanding of community participation and institutional development by project staff in donor-supported irrigation projects results in the poor performance of WUAs in enhancing participation in irrigation systems. The interventions of external bodies in setting up the WUA by-laws and in determining the responsibilities of users and WUA committees contributed to the low level of participation. The transfer of schemes to WUAs without building WUA committees' abilities in operation and maintenance constrained their ability to sustainably manage irrigation schemes. The WUA committees are male-dominated and the views of women are hardly represented in the decision making. Therefore, establishing WUA committees that reflect the interests and inputs of scheme users is crucial to achieve fair decision making. Local authorities and non-governmental organizations could do more to change perceptions and behaviour to reflect the importance of gender equity in sustaining the positive outcomes of irrigation at household and community levels.

Water user associations in Inner Mongolia: Factors that influence farmers to join

2009 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 822-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanghua Qiao ◽  
Lijuan Zhao ◽  
K.K. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Inner Mongolia ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Water User

The question of inclusion and representation in rural South Africa: challenging the concept of water user associations as a vehicle for transformation

Water Policy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Kemerink ◽  
L. E. Méndez ◽  
R. Ahlers ◽  
P. Wester ◽  
P. van der Zaag
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Rural South ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Water User ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Reform Processes ◽  
Rural South Africa

The promotion of local governance and the transfer of water management responsibilities to water user associations (WUAs) have been central in water reform processes throughout the world, including in the reforms that took place in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper reflects on the notions of inclusion and representation as put forward by the various actors involved in the establishment of a WUA in a tertiary catchment in the Thukela River Basin. The paper describes how the WUA in the study catchment came to be dominated by commercial farmers, despite the South African government's aim to redress the inequities of the past by the inclusion and representation of historically disadvantaged individuals. The authors argue that the notions of inclusion and representation as embedded in the concept of the WUA are highly contested and more aligned with the institutional settings familiar to the commercial farmers. The paper concludes that, unless the inherently political nature of the participatory process is recognized and the different institutional settings become part of the negotiation process of the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of progressive collaboration at catchment level, the establishment of the WUA in the study catchment will not contribute to achieving the envisioned transformation.

scholarly journals Analyzing the Performances of Water User Associations to Increase the Irrigation Sustainability: An Application of Multivariate Statistics to a Case Study in Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6327
Author(s):  
Demetrio Antonio Zema ◽  
Pasquale Filianoti ◽  
Daniela D’Agostino ◽  
Antonino Labate ◽  
Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Water Price ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Large Variability ◽  
Water User ◽  
Economy Of Scale ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Benchmarking techniques are useful and simple tools to analyze the performance of the collective irrigation in the Water User Associations (WUAs) towards an increase in service sustainability. Several benchmarking techniques have been proposed to process and predict performance indicators. Instead, some meaningful statistical techniques based on the distance of data samples, which overcome the limitations of the traditional benchmarking techniques, have never been applied to the collective irrigation sector. This study applies Permutational Multivariate Analysis of Variance (PERMANOVA), Multidimensional Scale Models (MDS), and Distance-Based Linear Models (DISTLM) as benchmarking techniques to evaluate the technical and financial performances of 10 WUAs in Calabria (Southern Italy). These benchmarking techniques revealed that the significant differences in the irrigated areas and financial self-sufficiency of the WUAs, shown by PERMANOVA, depend on the large variability of the remaining performance indicators. Both the MDS and DISTLM demonstrated that a higher number of associated users and larger irrigation service coverage allows an increase in the irrigated areas; this enlargement is facilitated if the water price and the size of the personnel staff decrease. The WUAs’ self-sufficiency is mainly influenced by the number of workers and the maintenance, organization, and management costs, while the impacts of the due service fees and water price are more limited; it is also convenient to increase the number of the associated farmers since this increases the economy of scale and the gross revenues of the irrigation service. Overall, from the analysis carried out for the regional case study, these benchmarking techniques seem to be powerful and easy tools to identify the problems of the irrigation service and help in planning the most suitable policies to improve the sustainability of the collective irrigation at the regional scale.

scholarly journals Impacts Assessments without True Baselines: Assessing the Relative Effects of Training on the Performance of Water User Associations in Southern Tajikistan

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soumya Balasubramanya ◽  
Joseph P. G. Price ◽  
Theodore M. Horbulyk
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Propensity Scores ◽  
Single Point ◽  
Water User Associations ◽  
Water User ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Synthetic Controls ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Time Invariant ◽  
The Impact

Conducting rigorous evaluations of whether the process of creating new institutions affects their performance of mandated duties presents several challenges. Not only is assignment to process often not random, but when the process of creating new institutions starts, outcomes and other performance-influencing covariates are not measurable because the yet-to-be created institutions are not functioning at baseline. This paper compares the performance of 74 ‘treated’ water user associations (WUAs) in Tajikistan that were created using a longer training process with 67 ‘control’ WUAs that were created using shorter training, to assess the impact of training on WUA performance of mandated duties. First, propensity scores were constructed to estimate the probabilities of being ‘treated’ by treatment status. These results guided the application of the difference-in-difference technique with right-hand side covariates in a context where field measures of outcomes and other performance-influencing covariates were made after the new institutions were created and functioning. The first measures were taken within 12–18 months of the new institutions being functional and the second measures were taken 24 months after the first. This choice of methods introduces a bias due to measurement error causing an underestimate of the treatment effects, while controlling for biases due to time-invariant and time-varying unobservables. An alternative method that only compared the differences in outcomes at a single point in time after the new institutions were created would have provided an inaccurate estimate of the effects of the intervention. This is a context in which methods such as synthetic controls are impossible to employ due to the nature of the intervention, other macroeconomic structural changes, and severe data restrictions. The methodology employed here generates evidence that, while biased toward generating an underestimate of effect, can still be useful and informative for policy and management purposes, and for evaluating the impact of process on the functioning of new institutions in transition settings.

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