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Joint Venture schemes based on the floppy irrigation technology are being promoted in the post-Apartheid South Africa's Limpopo Province. Access to land and water resources in South Africa are largely viewed as a mechanism for re-dressing the Apartheid injustices. This research was part of a broader applied research to help inform irrigation practise in the Limpopo Province. The research used literature review, key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey. The overall research question sought to understand how the Joint Venture Schemes had benefited the smallholder farmers. This paper argues that the joint venture partnership created a new injustice. Firstly, the Joint Venture Scheme design is fundamentally a bad idea which disempower farmers not only to water access but also land as well. The choice of the ‘efficient’ floppy irrigation technology was made by the state and entailed that land had to be managed as a single unit. In order to make more effective use of this highly sophisticated new technology, the smallholder farmers also needed to go into a joint venture partnership with a white commercial farmer. By virtue of signing the Joint Venture agreement the farmers were also forfeiting their land and water rights to be used for crop production. The smallholder farmers lost access to their water and land resources and were largely relegated to sharing profits – when they exist - with hardly any skills development despite what was initially envisaged in the Joint Venture partnership. Secondly, the implementation of the JVS has been skewed from the start which explains the bad results. This paper further shows how the negative outcomes affected women in particular. As the smallholder farmers argue the technological options chosen by the state have excluded both male and female farmers from accessing and utilising their land and water resources in order to improve their livelihoods; it has entrenched the role of the state and the private interests at the expense of the smallholder male and female farmers in whose name the irrigation funding was justified. The paper concludes by offering recommendations on how joint venture schemes can be genuinely participatory and meaningfully address the rural livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wastewater is increasingly regarded as a valuable resource, but to fully and safely exploit the potential, sound institutional arrangements governing its reuse are crucial. This article presents a case study of a self-managed irrigation scheme in Western Cape, South Africa, that uses treated effluent directly, formally and safely. By applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, the variables within the context, action arena and patterns of interaction that have enabled this outcome are systematically identified and evaluated. Key variables include: water scarcity; an effective policy and regulatory framework; public pollution prevention awareness; self-organization; and capital-intensive water use linked to profitable markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Water transfers to growing cities in sub-Sahara Africa, as elsewhere, seem inevitable. But absolute water entitlements in basins with variable supply may seriously affect many water users in times of water scarcity. This paper is based on research conducted in the Pangani river basin, Tanzania. Using a framework drawing from a theory of water right administration and transfer, the paper describes and analyses the appropriation of water from smallholder irrigators by cities. Here, farmers have over time created flexible allocation rules that are negotiated on a seasonal basis. More recently the basin water authority has been issuing formal water use rights that are based on average water availability. But actual flows are more often than not less than average. The issuing of state-based water use rights has been motivated on grounds of achieving economic efficiency and social equity. The emerging water conflicts between farmers and cities described in this paper have been driven by the fact that domestic use by city residents has, by law, priority over other types of use. The two cities described in this paper take the lion's share of the available water during the low-flow season, and at times over and above the permitted amounts, creating extreme water stress among the farmers. Rural communities try to defend their prior use claims through involving local leaders, prominent politicians and district and regional commissioners. Power inequality between the different actors (city authorities, basin water office, and smallholder farmers) played a critical role in the reallocation and hence the dynamics of water conflict. The paper proposes proportional allocation, whereby permitted abstractions are reduced in proportion to the expected shortfall in river flow, as an alternative by which limited water resources can be fairly allocated. The exact amounts (quantity or duration of use) by which individual user allocations are reduced would be negotiated by the users at the river level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments, NGOs and financers invest considerable resources in rural domestic water supplies and irrigation development. However, elite capture and underuse, if not complete abandonment, are frequent. While the blame is often put on 'corrupt, lazy and indisciplined' communities, this article explores the question of how the public water sector itself contributes to this state of affairs. Four case studies, which are part of the research project Cooperation and Conflict in Local Water Governance, are examined: two domestic water supply projects (Mali, Vietnam); one participatory multiple use project (Zambia); and one large-scale irrigation project (Bolivia). It was found that accountability of water projects was upward and tended to lie in construction targets for single uses with already allocated funding. This rendered project implementers dependent upon the village elite for timely spending. Yet, the elite appeared hardly motivated to maintain communal schemes, unless they themselves benefited. The dependency of projects on the elite can be reduced by ensuring participatory and inclusive planning that meets the project's conditions before budget allocation. Although such approaches are common outside the water sector, a barrier in the water sector is that central public funds are negotiated by each sector by profiling unique expertise and single livelihood goals, which trickle down as single use silos. The article concludes with reflections on plausible benefits of participatory multiple use services for equity and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrigation tanks in India are common property resources. Tanks provide not only for irrigation, but also forestry, fishing, domestic water supply, livestock, and other uses. Using empirical results from a study of tank performance from 80 tanks in Tamil Nadu, South India in two time period: 1996-97 and 2009-10, this paper evaluates tank irrigation system performance in terms of economic output and revenue generation forirrigation and other uses. The results indicate that irrigation and other productive uses put together raised the total value of output at tank level by 12 % in 1996-97 and just 6 % in 2009-10. This may suggest that tank multiple use values are small and getting smaller, and therefore not worth consideration. However, it was also found that, while declining in absolute terms, non-irrigation uses provided the majority of tax revenues and still more than cover government's operation and maintenance expenditure (O&M) budget. This finding provides another reason to consider multiple use values and their linkage with overall system viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division of Central Asia into several independent states, and the transition from the centrally planned economy to a market economy in the majority of those states, affected all sectors and all social levels in the region. One such example is irrigation. Centrally planned and financed from Moscow, on-farm irrigation systems were managed by collective farms. The process of decentralization through the dismantling of collective farms led to a restructuring of services and infrastruc-ture throughout Central Asia. Water users associations (WUAs) have been established to transfer on-farm irrigation management to farmers throughout the region, including Uzbekistan. Many women in Uzbekistan actively participate in farming activities, so their role in the on-farm irrigation restructuring process is important. Yet, the findings from this study suggest that participation of women is very limited in WUAs as very few women are registered as land owners. Because of high levels of migration by men to other countries, farm activities are mostly carried out by women. Despite this, women’s decision-making power within their farms is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The case study describes large-scale environmental change related to, and recent responses associated with, growing water scarcity in the Usangu Plains, a catchment of the Great Ruaha River in south-west Tanzania. The analysis uses outputs from two recent projects to critically examine various theories of environmental change and the ‘fit’ of new river basin management strategies to the problems found, arguing that various perspectives are worryingly at odds with each other. We find that the investigators of the two projects presented a reasonable and sufficient case of the causes of water scarcity. Yet despite efforts to disseminate scientific findings, different stakeholder groups did not agree with this case. This, we believe, was due to three combined factors; firstly highly entrenched views existed that were also based on quasi-scientific reasoning; secondly, the projects’ deliberations to date, in acknowledging their own uncertainty, were not assertive enough in ascribing causation to the various processes of change; thirdly, policy-uptake was not sufficiently managed by the scientists involved. We conclude that this complexity of the science–policy interface is a feature of integrated water resources management (IWRM) and that the norms of scientific uncertainty in the face of competing theories (held by their protagonists with greater certainty) obliges scientists to take a more active role in sensitively managing the advice-to-policy process in order to improve management of water within river basins. Thus, the paper argues, the nature of integrated water resources management is one of ‘action research’ to move towards an improved understanding of change, and of ‘action policy-advising’ to draw policy-makers into a cycle of considered decision-making. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Water-permit systems are widely used across Africa as a blanket requirement for small and micro irrigation enterprises, as well as large enterprises. The present study aimed to, first, further understand the implications of permit systems for both the most vulnerable and the state, and, second, based on the findings, identify options for pro-poor water legislation that also meet the water governance requirements of the state. The growing recognition of the importance of farmer-led irrigation development for food security across the continent underlines the importance of these questions. Focusing on Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and other African countries, we found that permit systems criminalized instead of protected the water rights of small-scale farmers. Moreover, little if any attention is paid to the logistical burdens and costs to the state of implementing such systems relative to the intended revenue generation. As many small-scale farmers in Africa were found to operate under customary land and water tenure systems, the study proposes a hybrid system of water rights that formally recognizes such practices, along with the use of permits, including enforcement of conditions for large users, to serve the interests of both the state and small-scale farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Water is critically important to the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day, particularly for the 850 million rural poor primarily engaged in agriculture. In many developing countries, water is a major factor constraining agricultural output, and income of the world''s rural poor. Improved agricultural water management can contribute to poverty reduction through several pathways. First, access to reliable water improves production and productivity, enhances employment opportunities and stabilizes income and consumption. Secondly, it encourages the utilization of other yield-enhancing inputs and allows diversification into high-value products, enhances nonfarm outputs and employment, and fulfils multiple needs of households. Third, it may contribute either negatively or positively to nutritional status, health, societal equity and environment. The net impact of agricultural water management interventions on poverty may depend individually and/or synergistically on the working of these pathways. Improved access to water is essential, but not sufficient for sustained poverty reduction. Investments are needed in agricultural science and technology, policies and institutions, economic reform, addressing global agricultural trade inequities, etc. But how best to match the agricultural water management technologies, institutions and policies to the needs of the heterogeneous poor living in diverse agro-ecological settings remains unclear. This article provides a menu of promising pathways through which agricultural water management can contribute to sustained poverty reduction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]