Summary Remarks

Prepared by Fernando Gonzalez, The World Bank.

1. This summary is based primarily on the individual interventions for the Conference and the papers prepared by the theme coordinators. It also contains experiences in the World Bank portfolio and the evaluation of recent irrigation projects involving institutional reform components. A first section reviews information on the importance of IMT, the second deals with the basic issues and recommendations identified by participants and a final part deals with opinions about the way forward.

2. The Email Conference produced a large number of interventions and rich material from a wide number of specialists and practitioners. The themes are so interrelated that a clear division is not always possible and some cross-cutting issues are included in several themes. The Email Conference is a tool that information technology gives us in order to exchange a large amount of information throughout a network at low cost. The E-mail Conference does not substitute for personal contact or the written material that can be disseminated to practitioners that do not have easy access to the web. It gives us the opportunity to enhance the traditional conferences by having fresh discussions via electronic exchange. The future INPIM conference in Beijing can be an opportunity where experiences with IMT be further consolidated and shared.

3. The purpose of the Email Conference was fully achieved. During the Conference participants have ".. identified and shared key issues and lessons gained from experiences around the world with Irrigation Management Transfers (IMT) from Government to users and private sector organizations". The interchange was intense, more than 140 interventions in the six theme sessions, and the many cases and country profiles demonstrated widespread interest.

Importance of IMT

4. Irrigation has been a key factor for food security and rural development. Expansion of irrigated areas, adoption of high-yielding varieties and better agronomic practices have been key factors for increases in food production during the past decades. While the exact contribution of these factors to productivity growth is difficult to quantify, it is well recognized that expansion of irrigated area has played a major role in improving global and regional food security. Over the last three decades, the world's net irrigated area has increased by 73 percent, from 150 million ha in 1965 to 260 million ha in 1995 (FAO 1998). The world's irrigated cereal area at present accounts for 31 percent of the total harvested area, but accounts for 43 percent of the total production. The productivity in irrigated cereal lands is 60 percent higher than the productivity in rain-fed cereal lands. Irrigation is by far the largest water user, supply at present accounts for 74 percent of the total water withdrawals. Much of the growth in irrigation area and withdrawals in the last three decades was achieved through a combination of large to medium-scale water development projects. These included multi-purpose large reservoirs financed by governments (in some cases with international support) and extensive tube-well extractions implemented with private investment. But today irrigation and drainage needs to reform to face old problems and new challenges.

5. Irrigation sector reform needs to cope with the new driving forces of: competing demands for water, environmental responsibility, food security and a changing role of the state towards a more participatory society. To meet these challenges, irrigation services need to be significantly improved. Irrigation must provide a wide range of users with on-time, adequate and equitable supply of water at least cost. To achieve this goal, irrigation institutions need to adopt a service orientation and improve their performance in different areas, including the adoption of new technologies, modernizing infrastructure, application of improved administrative principles and techniques and promotion of participation of water users. Irrigation sector institutions need to link their central task of providing irrigation services to agricultural production services and to integrated water resources management at basin level.

6. At global level there is a need to produce more food with the same amount of water, improve water resources management and contribute to the well-being of rural inhabitants that constitute most of the poor people in developing countries. But the real needs for reform come from the individual countries and local levels. conference participants acknowledged the important driving forces for IMT are: wider economic and political reform processes taking place at the national level, fiscal crisis, water user dissatisfaction with irrigation services and lack of trust about the effectiveness and honesty of service providers. Reforming the sector involves not a fine tuning of the functions of Governments, users and private organizations, but an in-depth change in the roles and nature of the participants and the rules of the game (or institutions) in the sector.

7. The reform implied in IMT involves transferring responsibilities and changes in authority and decisions about resource allocation, regulatory powers, modernization, operation and maintenance and other management responsibilities. IMT is not a "fluffy subject", it involves changes in political economy including cultural and social aspects and the roles and participation of civil society. It also involves harmonizing country specific contexts in an increasingly globalized world. IMT is a complex process to improve the quality of irrigation services and decrease its costs. It is difficult to implement, it implies a long time perspective and it's design must be country specific.

8. IMT was used in some interventions as synonymous with participatory irrigation management (PIM) or institutional reform. Both involve changing responsibilities and roles of government, users and private sector in the different functions, responsibilities and authority dealing with irrigation and drainage. An increasing number of interventions recognize that effective IMT involves simultaneous creation and empowerment of water users associations and changes in the irrigation provider organizations. Some participants suggest that a transfer (IMT) can be made from one central government entity to a public commercially oriented organization, as happened in Australia.

9. The IMT experiences described in the different interventions have mixed results. Some early experiences with PIM in the early 1970's were not sustainable and the changes introduced and results obtained were only partial and were unsatisfactory. The cases of Philippines, Pakistan or Sri Lanka show how large numbers of small water users associations were created without significant improvement in the performance of irrigation systems. More recent cases in Mexico, Turkey, Albania and Andhra Pradesh, India are rated satisfactory in terms of development objectives and sustainability.

Emerging issues, lessons and recommendations

10. The lessons from the Conference have improved the knowledge and therefore the probability of success of future IMT projects by describing experiences, identifying issues and recommending approaches in the six themes. In this summary these are regrouped into three topics:

• IMT policies and scope (including support services),
• Organizational, legal and regulatory framework for change,
• Financing and modernization of irrigation systems and management.

Policies and scope

11. The themes dealing with policies and scope of IMT had the largest number of interventions, probably because they included cross-cutting issues that relate to other topics. The objectives of IMT differed but in general there is an agreement to accept the objective to "improve equity and quality of service to users (through a service or demand orientation) and to empower users to manage the physical and social environments and reduce the cost of O&M." The scope varied from the management of the tertiary canals to the primary systems excluding the head-works. The possibility to federate WUAs to manage more complex systems was widely discussed.

12. The interventions described a range of paces of IMT in different cases, from the Big Ban approach to gradual approaches and use of pilot projects. There is an increasing consensus about the unsatisfactory performance of gradual experiences and pilot projects. Some cases, such as the Philippines, are taking many years without a real transfer of responsibilities and empowerment of users.

13. The multi-functionality of WUAs is an issue of concern. There are some examples of WUAs supporting agribusiness and other agricultural services. However the simple, direct and focused objective of irrigation service provider allows for a more transparent and accountable operation. Training and capacity building, irrigation advisory services and linkages with extension services and river basin organizations were discussed as possible secondary functions for WUAs.

14. The political economy of IMT and the enabling environment for it are increasingly under discussion. It is widely recognized that preconditions for a successful reform include: i) a favorable reform environment and political will, ii) existence of champions for change, iii) a clearly defined vision of the direction of reform, iv) a supportive legal framework, v) a simple and transparent implementation process, vi) incentives aligned with the reform, vii) training and capacity building and viii) monitor evaluation and feedback ( bench-marking).

15. Irrigation reform processes like the ones in Mexico, Turkey and Andhra Pradesh have occurred in countries with relatively strong governments. They were originated from the top of the Government hierarchy and were associated with wider political-economic transformations (at least that was the case in Mexico and Andhra Pradesh). In this respect, the case of Albania is unique, because, partly due to the weak government at the time, there was no effective opposition by the irrigation bureaucracy (and other organized opposition groups), and in this way the transformation was facilitated.

16. Governments have important responsibilities not only during the transfer but during the post management transfer process. Monitoring and evaluation or bench-marking, enforcing regulations and agreements, auditing, attending to complaints and dispute resolution, cost sharing, providing technical assistance, capacity building and O&M of headworks are some of the frequent functions for government entities.

17. Use of bench-marking in irrigation. Bench-marking was initiated by the private sector to improve the performance of an organization as measured against its mission and objectives. Bench-marking implies comparison both internally with previous performance and desired future targets, and externally against organizations performing similar functions. Bench-marking is about change, moving from one position to a better position and it is a continuing process. It is important that the change process is fully integrated within the organization's management processes and procedures. The World Bank is now developing an effort to establish a global irrigation and drainage bench-marking process, following the experiences in irrigation and drainage in Australia and in the water supply and sanitation sector of different countries.

Organizational, legal and regulatory framework for change

18. An increasing number of governments around the world are adopting programs to reform their irrigation institutions, based on their traditions and experiences and examining the diversity of institutional options that exists in the world. A wide number of sectors is looking for better ways to provide public services that have a monopolistic character. They are providing a regulatory framework, accountability mechanisms and some elements of competition. Looking at the experiences in different countries, one can distinguish a number of basic organizational models used for managing irrigation systems around the world, such as: government departments, water users associations, public utilities, local governments, irrigation districts, mutual companies and private companies.

19. Is new legislation a precondition for IMT? The cases in Mexico and Turkey were done using the existing legal framework before transfer. The law and regulation changed after the majority of the systems were transferred. In any case, a regulatory framework is needed to: i) create the user organizations in some cases under the civil law, ii) to determine the responsibilities of the government including authority to regulate and apply sanctions and iii) establishment of rights and obligations of water users. Important issues are: How to set irrigation service fees, collection mechanisms and the allocation of water rights to individual users or other organizations. The consideration of ground water management and maintenance and investments in drainage in the context of IMT were subjects of concern for many participants.

20. Better trained and informed elites exercise disproportionate influence in decision making in some water user associations. Ways to promote gender equality and participation of other minority groups in WUAs and to democratize the organizations are matters of concern. In situations where a minority of women function in male dominated societies (as in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan) women face exclusion from WUAs. In this cases affirmative action can be recommended.

Financing and modernization of systems and management

21. Whether institutions determine technology or vice versa. The participants tend to agree about the need to strengthen technical aspects of irrigation. Large systems require full time well trained professionals to do a variety of complex tasks, from accounting to hydraulic calculations and operations. But the institutional problems can limit adaptation and application of technology that can in many cases improve performance at low costs. A balanced approach is needed.

22. Small holdings and low productivity complicate the process. When talking about a reform in the sector, it is very common to hear comments like, "that solution can not apply here because the size of farms is very small, yields are low and the farmers are poor". The participants described how IMT needs to take such factors into account in order to design a process that is appropriate to specific contexts. The experiences in Mexico show that systems with small farm sizes and low productivity need more assistance from the government in order to build the capacity of WUAs in these cases. A possible solution is to phase reform starting with the easier cases and progress to more difficult cases as new knowledge is acquired.

23. What should come first, rehabilitation or transfer? Ideally, the systems should be in good operating conditions for the transfer and therefore a rehabilitation needs to be done in many cases before transfer. Some think that the transfer should go ahead independently of the investment in rehabilitation. The participants tend to agree that a compromise is needed. IMT implementation is facilitated by applying rehabilitation funds as incentives for the transfer. Conditioning transfer to "rehabilitation first" usually stops the process.

24. Size of irrigation schemes and social or business orientation. Management organizations for large irrigation schemes can be organized with an entrepreneurial orientation, can benefit from economies of scale and can employ professional staff. But they have a larger distance between the management board and the final users and therefore need mechanisms for auditing and ensuring transparency in operations. Small social or "cooperative associations" can have a more direct contact and more participatory community work but lack the scale to modernize their systems.

25. Right mix of investment and policy reform to set an effective incentive framework. When incentives are not aligned to the reform agenda the results are uncertain. Cases like a recent irrigation improvement project in Sri Lanka, where farmers that did not pay the irrigation fee got the same service as farmers who did paid it, ended up in a waste of resources and with low O&M cost recovery. In addition, WUAs had no effective power or responsibilities in resource management. Projects with no incentives in the form of rehabilitation or modernization are not attractive to irrigation users.

26. Sufficient budgets for O&M and participation of users in decisions about operations and water scheduling. IMT usually increases the cost of water for users. It is now generally agreed that governments should "insure that WUAs are willing and capable of paying with their fees at least the O&M and replacement costs" as one of the most important pre-conditions to have a successful transfer.

27. There are difficulties for volumetric provision of water delivery services related to water rights and volumetric charging. It has been argued that the lack of measurement infrastructure make it impossible to deliver water by volume to irrigation users according to their individual rights. Cases where measuring devices have been constructed show that having the physical infrastructure is not sufficient. In fact, farmers destroy measuring devices in many places. The challenge is to build the social and organizational framework to allow this provision. This is a good research area for IMT researchers and practitioners.

28. Mismanagement can occur in every type of organization including WUAs. Experiences in different countries from the private sector managed systems in Chile, associations in Mexico and the new associations in Albania show that one of the key problems is to avoid financial mismanagement. Financial mismanagement constitutes a large risk for WUAs to fail. Accountability and transparency, auditing and disclosure are essential processes that need to be in place in IMT. Feedback from users has not been used extensively in the sector. IMT provides a voice and choice for water users.

Way forward

29. Discussion at Beijing. The INPIM seminar to be held in Beijing next March or April 2002, is a good occasion to discuss the finding of the Email Conference and to link the participatory approaches (PIM) to the Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) concepts in order to develop a unified conceptual framework for reforming the irrigation sector.

30. A source book. The idea to use the Email Conference material to edit a source book is being supported by a number of participants. The idea could be elaborated in order to invite donors to participate in this important activity that has a potential to benefit many irrigation areas.

31. Some coordinators identified topics for research on IMT. The following list is only an initial identification of possible topics. These are: organizational arrangements where WUAs do not have an executive role but represent farmer interests, multifunctionality of associations and need for control mechanisms, relation between infrastructure and institutional options, responsibilities of landowners and tenants, sanctions that associations could impose, allocation and transfer of water rights, IMT and gender considerations, water scheduling and IMT, compilation of training and other support materials, volumetric water delivery, financing and enforcement and social organization.

32. There is a demand for toolkits to facilitate the access of IMT information to decision makers and practitioners on subjects such as: water rights, incentives and pricing, regulatory framework, benchmarking and institutional options.

Contact: imt-moderator@fao.org