If government laws and agencies can create suitable conditions by respecting local institutions, providing technical advice, and helping enforce agreements, then users can draw on their local knowledge to cooperatively forge better ways to allocate scarce water, whether within a single irrigation system or within a larger river basin. Beyond just producing crops, irrigation systems in developing countries are vital to rural livelihoods,providing water for livestock and fish production, domestic use, and many small enterprises. Although irrigation now has the lion s share of freshwater use, demand for urban and industrial water supplies is growing rapidly around the world. Simply taking water away from agriculture expropriation without compensation is inequitable and likely to face increasing resistance. The much higher economic value of water for urban and industrial use creates the possibility of win-win agreements with farmers willing to transfer their water to other uses, but only if forums are available for negotiating mutually beneficial agreements.
Water is a great force for bringing people together.
It is a classic common pool resource, where one person s use affects another person, but when people work together they can accomplish a great deal. This work, which received funding from the Ford Foundation, shows how users can participate in creating better ways to allocate access to this vital resource. A case study in this book shows that when disputes arise, farmers use varied strategies, including court cases, international aid projects, political patronage, and even sabotage and violence, to establish or defend their claims, but the most favorable outcomes arise when community leaders establish good relationships with each other. When the government built a new large-scale irrigation system to expand an ancient tank irrigation system in southern Sri Lanka, farmers in the old and new irrigated areas had to negotiate over how water would be distributed during periods of scarcity. A project management committee with strong user representation from all areas, along with technical information provided by government agencies, was over time able to negotiate better distribution rules than when outside politicians were appealed to.