Emerging Public-Private Partnerships in Irrigation Development and Management
The objective of this paper is to identify the possible role and opportunities for the private sector to participate with governments and farmers in developing and managing irrigation and drainage (I&D) infrastructure. Over the last 50 years, i...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/05/9290040/emerging-public-private-partnerships-irrigation-development-management http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17241 |
| Summary: | The objective of this paper is to
identify the possible role and opportunities for the private
sector to participate with governments and farmers in
developing and managing irrigation and drainage (I&D)
infrastructure. Over the last 50 years, irrigated
agriculture has been vital to meeting fast-rising food
demand and has been key to poverty reduction. In the coming
years the strong demographic demand for food is expected to
continue, and intensified irrigated agriculture will have to
provide close to 60 percent of the extra food. However, in
recent years, the pace of irrigation expansion has been
slowing, there has been less improvement in productivity,
and water availability for irrigation is increasingly
constrained. Governments have long led the expansion of
large-scale irrigation, but performance has been suboptimal,
and reforms that have been introduced have proved slow to
improve efficiency and water service. Faced with this
challenge, the I&D sector has been wrestling with three
deep-seated problems: low water use efficiency, a high
reliance on government financing, and poor standards of
management and maintenance. Much of the search for improved
investment and institutional models in I&D has been
driven by the need to resolve these three problems. One
solution that has been tested over the last two decades has
been Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) involving
water user associations (WUAs) in the financing and
management of schemes. This solution had its logical
culmination in irrigation management transfer, the handover
of responsibility for scheme operation and maintenance
(O&M) to farmers and their organizations. This solution
promised to relieve governments of both the fiscal burden
and the responsibility for asset management and maintenance
and to improve efficiency by empowering farmers. PIM has
made impressive strides. However, efficiency has risen only
marginally, and there are many schemes where O&M is
beyond farmers' capacity. |
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