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Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has been a dominant paradigm for water sector reform worldwide over the past two decades. Ethiopia, among early adopters, has developed a water policy, legislations, and strategy per IWRM core principles. However, considerable constraints are still in its way of realization. This paper investigates the central challenges facing IWRM implementation in the Awash Basin analyzing the discrepancy between IWRM principles, the approach followed in Ethiopia and its practice in the Awash Basin. A decade and a half since its adoption, the Ethiopian IWRM still lacks a well-organized and robust legal system for implementation. Unclear and overlapping institutional competencies as well as a low level of stakeholders' awareness on policy contents and specific mandates of implementing institutions have prevented the Basin Authority from fully exercising its role as the prime institute for basin level water management. As a result, coordination between stakeholders, a central element of the IWRM concept, is lacking. Insufficient management instruments and planning tools for the operational function of IWRM are also among the major hurdles in the process. This calls for rethinking and action on key elements of the IWRM approach to tackle the implementation challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia accounts for 70% of the world's irrigated area and is home to some of the oldest and largest irrigation schemes. While these irrigation schemes played an important role in ensuring food security for billions of people in the past, their current state of affairs leaves much to be desired. This paper takes forward the IWMIFAO-ADB (Asian Development Bank) recommendation of a five-pronged approach for revitalizing Asia's irrigation and provides a region-specific road map for doing this. The underlying principle of these multiple strategies is the belief that the public institutions at the heart of irrigation management in Asia need to give up comfortable rigidity and engage with individual users' needs and the demands placed by larger societal changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]