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HOW DESIGN, MANAGEMENT AND POLICY

AFFECT THE PERFORMANCE


OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS

EMERGING MODERNIZATION PROCEDURES
AND DESIGN STANDARDS







Herv Plusquellec


FAO 2002
Bangkok, Thailand


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HOW DESIGN, MANAGEMENT AND POLICY
AFFECT THE PERFORMANCE
OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS

EMERGING MODERNIZATION PROCEDURES
AND DESIGN STANDARDS





Herv Plusquellec


FAO 2002
Bangkok, Thailand


AN ADVOCACY DOCUMENT FOR ALL STAKEHOLDERS:
IRRIGATION AGENCIES, FINANCING INSTITUTIONS,
USER ASSOCIATIONS, PLANNERS, DESIGNERS
AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS

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ISBN 974-680-215-1
RAP 2002/20










FAO, March 2002
All rights reserved, No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright
owner. Applications for such permission with a statement of
the purpose and extent of the reproduction, should be
addressed to the Meetings and Publication Office, Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional
Office for Asia and the Pacific, Maliwan Mansion, 39 Phra
Athit Road, Bangkok 10200, Thailand
The designations employed and the presentation of material
in this publication do not imply the expression of any
opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal
status of any country, city or area or of its authorities, or
concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE 1
PART I: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 13
I. THE CAUSES OF POOR PERFORMANCE OF IRRIGATION
PROJECTS: AN UNFINISHED DEBATE 13
Perceived deficiencies in technical design and management 14
Administrative and behavioural reasons 17
Criticism of engineers 17
Criticism of development banks and donor agencies 19
The slow recognition of design as a main reason of the poor
performance of irrigation systems 21
The dawn of a new approach to irrigation design and management 24
II. PERFORMANCE OF IRRIGATION SYSTEMS 27
III. A REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS 31
1. The World Bank 31
The lack of an irrigation policy paper 31
Pressure to lend 32
Use of overoptimistic assumptions during design and appraisal 34
2. The Asian Development Bank 34
3. The FAO Cooperative Programme guidelines 35
Identification and preparation of irrigation projects 35
Updating of the 1984 irrigation guidelines (1996) 37
IV. TECHNICAL VERSUS MANAGERIAL CHANGES 40
V. TECHNOLOGY VERSUS INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS: USER
PARTICIPATION 45
From social to business associations 45
Impact of irrigation management transfer on the performance of
irrigation projects 49
VI. IMPROVED IRRIGATION IN THE CONTEXT OF WATER
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 52

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PART II: CHANGING APPROACHES TO THE DESIGN OF
IRRIGATION PROJECTS 55

VII. IRRIGATION DESIGN CONCEPTS IN SELECTED COUNTRIES 55

A. Traditional irrigation systems 55
B. Country experience 56
1. India 56
2. Pakistan 58
3. Egypt: the Nile valley system 62
4. Sudan: the Gezira project 63
5. China 66
6. North African countries 68
7. Iran 70
8. Malaysia 72
9. Indonesia 73
10. United States of America 74

C. Use of Bureau of Reclamation design standards in developing
countries 75
D. Cross country transfer of technology 78
India: transfer of rotational distribution from northwest India
to the southern states 79
Transfer of rotational irrigation from India to Thailand and Nepal80
Indonesia: transfer of technology to user-managed systems 81
E. Conclusions 82


VIII. THE FORCES OF CHANGE 87
Response from farmers 89
Response from technology 90
Response from agricultural research 91
Response from the governments 92

IX. THE EXPLOSIVE EXPLOITATION OF GROUNDWATER
RESOURCES 92

X. THE PLANNING PROCESS: A GLOBAL GAME PLAN 95
Definition of modern design 95
Principles of modern design 96

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Proper objective 97
Water delivery 98
Configuration 99
Water control strategy 99
Guiding principles for selecting a control strategy and equipment 103
Modernization of existing schemes 109
Simulation of canal response for different scenarios 109
Centralized automatic control systems 110

XI. PARAMETERS INFLUENCING THE PLANNING AND DESIGN
OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS 111
Water resources 112
Groundwater resources 112
Silt load 114
Rainfall 115
Soil conditions 115
Crop diversification 116
Existing infrastructure 117
Land tenure and consolidation 118
Management and technical capability: the field reality 120
Economics and maintenance costs 120
Institutional setup 121
Operational capabilities of irrigation agencies and user associations 122
Pricing and water allocation strategy 123
Capacity of the construction industry 123

XII. THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNIZATION: OPTIONS
AND PROCEDURES 124
Infrastructure versus management inputs 124
Stepwise versus full-fledged modernization 125
The role of water users associations in the modernization process 127
Financing of rehabilitation programmes: a few examples 127
Specific design issues 131
Hierarchy of canals 131
Control of seepage losses 133

XIII. A PROCESS FOR REVISING DESIGN PROCEDURES
AND STANDARDS 135
Assess needs for change: the use of internal indicators 135
Development of new design procedures 138
Revision of design standards 139

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Strategies for dissemination 140
XIV. CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR COUNTRY IRRIGATION
POLICIES 141

REFERENCES 145

ANNEXES 149
Annex 1: Planning a large irrigation project in the 1950-70 period 149
Annex 2: Abstracts from the FAO Guidelines for Planning
Irrigation and Drainage Investment Projects 151
Annex 3: Conventional terms of reference for consulting services 153
Annex 4: Irrigation policy: modernization of water resources
in Brazil 154

FIGURES
Figure 1: A multi-tier user organization/agency of a surface
irrigation system 49
Figure 2: Alternative configurations of canal automated systems 101
Figure 3: Complexity of different control strategies at design,
construction and operation stages 103
Figure 4: Options for ease of operation and higher levels of service105
Figure 5: Flow rate fluctuations through weir and orifice control
structures 107
Figure 6: Combination of check and turnout structures 108
Figure 7: Land consolidation in an interventionist agricultural
economy 119
Figure 8: A land consolidation model in a liberal agricultural
economy 119
Figure 9: An irrigation project with a well-established hierarchy
of canals 131
Figure 10: A typical irrigation system with a loose hierarchy
of canals and a high number of direct outlets 132
Figure 11: Typical configuration of an irrigation system in Mid
and South China 133

PHOTOGRAPHS
*


Photo 1: Dominican Republic I
Photo 2: Viet Nam, Dau Tieng Project I

*
All photographs by Herv Plusquellec unless specified otherwise.

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Photo 3: Viet Nam, Dau Tieng Project II
Photo 4: Pakistan, SWABI Project in North West Frontier Province II
Photo 5: Argentina II
Photo 6: Nepal, Sunsari-Morang Project III
Photo 7: Iran, Guilan Project III
Photo 8: Iran, Guilan Project III
Photo 9: Malaysia, Kemubu Project IV
Photo 10: India, Majalgaon Project IV
Photo 11: Iran, Guilan Project IV
Photo 12: France V
Photo 13: Philippines V
Photo 14: Japan, farm layout before land consolidation V
Photo 15: Japan, farm layout after land consolidation V
Photo 16: Pakistan VI
Photo 17: USA, Salt River Project, SCADA VI
Photo 18: Spain, Cabral Project, SCADA VII
Photo 19: Morocco, Haouz Project (Socit du Canal de Provence) VII
Photo 20: Mexico, Rio Fuerte Project VIII
Cover : Vietnam, Dau Tieng Project
Vietnam, Dau Tieng Project (Arjen During)
Internal Cover : Alberta, Canada (Irrigation Secretariat, Alberta
Agriculture, Food and Rural Development)

1
PREFACE
Irrigation is in a quiet crisis. Despite undeniable past successes in
contributing to food production, irrigation expansion has
dramatically lost momentum since the 1980s due to a considerable
slowdown in new investment, losses of irrigated areas due to water
logging, salinization, aquifer over-drafting and urban encroachment
in some countries. However, irrigated agriculture still remains
essential for future food security. The reduction of investments in the
irrigation sector is not consistent with the identified needs for future
food security, as indicated by numerous model studies on projections
of food demand and supply. The increasing disinterest of donor
agencies and governments in irrigated agriculture may have dramatic
consequences in the coming years if the situation is not reversed
soon.
One of the factors that have contributed to this disinterest is the
relatively poor performance of large-scale canal irrigation projects.
These systems are the most difficult to manage and have yielded the
lowest returns compared to their expected potential. The paper
emphasizes that performance of irrigation projects is determined by a
combination of physical, institutional and policy factors. It focuses
however on the importance of design and technology that is often
denied or not recognized by decision-makers and others involved in
the development of large-scale irrigation.
This document is rather an advocacy, not a design manual, for
irrigation projects. However, it presents some important suggestions
for the revision of the planning process of irrigation projects and of
operational procedures which have an impact on the selection and
design of water control structures. The paper touches the issue of
projects with conjunctive use of canal and groundwater; but does not
address the design issues of projects making use of groundwater
only. The technical discussion on the design is limited to the
structures found in irrigation projects, which determine water
operation and distribution. It therefore excludes drops, escapes and
communication structures.

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This publication is divided into three main parts. The first part
reviews the various causes of performance of irrigation and drainage
projects below their expected potential as suggested by many
irrigation analysts over the last four decades. This part concludes that
the gap between potential and actual outcome is strongly related to
over-optimistic assumptions on hydraulic performance at planning
stage and in a number of cases to faulty and unrealistic designs. High
overall efficiency can only been reached in well-operated irrigation
systems, which require well-designed and constructed systems.

The second part describes the conventional design concepts and
operational procedures of irrigation projects used in the countries
with large irrigated areas. It then discusses the operational problems
of the design standards used in some countries or resulting from
inadequate transfer of technology.

The third part reviews various factors that should be considered in
the selection of an overall irrigation and water control strategy. The
final chapter proposes a process whereby agencies responsible for
irrigation would review existing design procedures and standards in
view of existing and future requirements in terms of service and
performance. Agencies would have to assess the needs for change
and the development of new design standards and procedures. The
chapter concludes with a strategy for the revision and dissemination
of revised guidelines.

***

This publication, its analyses and considerations, are global in scope,
although naturally Asian irrigation, its history and characteristics as
well as transfers of technology to and within the region are
extensively covered. We believe that the publication and its
recommendations are particularly relevant to Asia. For this reason,
the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific has undertaken to
commission and publish this work.

Present developments in the irrigation sector in Asia are dominated
to a large extent by Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and

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more recently Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) reforms, which
often have the stated objectives of providing sustainable and
adequate financing for operation and maintenance of irrigation and
drainage services and of facilitating investment in the required
rehabilitation or upgrading of irrigation systems. Overall reform of
water resource management often encompasses these reforms; it
typically includes demand management to encourage efficient water
allocation and imposes new externalities on irrigation systems in
terms of environmental, economic and financial performance. Water
pricing is often a pivotal feature of these reforms, at the intersection
of internal considerations of efficiency, fiscal or financial
sustainability of the irrigation systems and external water allocation
and environmental considerations.

Lending for irrigation has progressively changed over time from
project-specific investments to sector loans or projects that are
national or regional in scope and support the objectives of reform,
participation and capacity building. These projects often combine
low cost rehabilitation projects and management reforms with
attention to improved O&M and user participation. In Asia, where
the older public schemes have reached the age of 30-40 years in most
countries, the issue of rehabilitation is becoming increasingly
important. The content and orientation of rehabilitation in a context
of PIM/IMT will therefore be critical.

The limited success of the previous wave of PIM reforms in Asia has
led some analysts to the conclusion that these reforms had been
incomplete and that it was necessary to deepen the institutional
reforms to ensure that they were successful. It has also led to an
interest in importing to Asia reform models from other regions,
particularly Latin America, which are estimated to be more
successful.

While the merit of these recommendations is not denied, there is a
risk that seeking remedies only in the institutional sphere to the
problems faced by past institutional reforms will lead to a continua-
tion of the lack of attention to design and operation problems that
plague many large-scale irrigation systems in the region. This failure

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to address a significant cause of the low performance of the systems
has certainly contributed to frustrating the expectations raised by
sectoral reforms. The particular features of the irrigation systems in
the region are such that the introduction of new concepts of service
and accountability actually represents a greater challenge than in
other regions.

***

The level of chaos (difference between stated policies and actual
policies) and of anarchy (subversion of policies) in the formal
irrigation systems of the region, which comprise the great majority of
irrigated areas with the exception of certain countries (Afghanistan,
Nepal, Lao PDR), is often rather high. While lack of discipline and
institutional issues contribute greatly to this situation, many of the
problems can be traced to: problems in initial design; export of
design concepts outside of their area of validity; difficulty in
controlling and operating the systems; layouts with confused
hierarchies; serious flaws in operation strategies; inconsistencies
between operating rules at various levels and between operating rules
and farmers requirements; changes in farmers requirements not
reflected by changes in system policies; poor quality of the water
delivery service to farms; and lack of flexibility at all levels.

As a result, the actual water management of the systems is usually
quite different from the stated or intended water management. It
seems that, generally, establishing any type of improved
management system will require substantial efforts to restore water
control but also probably improve water measurement throughout the
irrigation systems. One can also reasonably assert that a condition for
a management system to work would be that stated operation policies
and distribution rules become the same as or close to actual operation
and distribution, and that these be consistent with farmers
requirements. IMT should provide the opportunity to achieve this. A
review of past and present IMT or PIM programmes in the region
suggests however that they usually fall short in two crucial areas: the
decision-making process leading to the decision on system operation

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strategies and service and performance objectives, and a proper
attention to design and other technical issues.

In theory, rehabilitation provides an opportunity to take into account
the management patterns of operators and irrigators. In practice,
however, rehabilitation simply re-establishes the physical
configuration of the original system. Low cost rehabilitation of
irrigation infrastructure, in some cases an investment to catch up on
years of differed maintenance, cannot correct deficiencies of the
original design. The issue is whether basic flaws or constraints can
be addressed with a light rehabilitation programme and whether not
doing so hampers IMT/PIM or jeopardizes the success of reform in
terms of sustainability of institutions and financial sustainability.

***

The notions of water delivery service and of generalized service-
orientation of institutions in the irrigation sector, whether river basin
agencies, reformed irrigation agencies, irrigation service providers or
water users associations, have become central in new concepts and
definitions of PIM and IMT. Literature on the evaluation of the
impact of ongoing participatory irrigation management and irrigation
management transfer programmes in terms of water service delivery,
agricultural productivity and agricultural performance indicates
however that, particularly in Asia, improved service is a problem
area.

The general impression is that after turnover, services have
substantially improved in regard to timeliness, reliability and equity.
Increases in irrigated area and crop intensity are mentioned in many
instances. Flexibility is not explicitly investigated but some results in
terms of timeliness and adequacy are registered. Improvements in
water use efficiency are more uncertain and their impact are typically
not noticeable in terms of agricultural performance, change in
irrigated area, crop patterns, cropping intensity or yields; PIM has
neither improved nor interfered with agricultural productivity.


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The future of farming is however seen to depend on crop
diversification and a more commercial orientation. Diversification
makes irrigation management more complex. The necessity of
reengineering irrigation, i.e. of taking a fresh look at key processes
and how they can best be carried out, and of considering both
hardware and software elements is emphasized as irrigation becomes
more commercial, but this is in apparent sharp contrast with actual
design processes and their outcomes.

In Asia, the most common tool for planning rehabilitation or
improvement works is the walk-through. PRA mapping and transects
of land tenure, farming systems and ecosystems are also common. A
diagnosis of operational procedures is usually not performed,
physical works are rarely related to service or performance goals and
expectations are low. The focus on upgrading is generally on
reliability and equity, which are admittedly frequently the first issues
to be addressed, but there is generally no vision of future
requirements or discussion of flexibility.

PIM has generally led to modest efforts by farmers to improve
management efficiency and responsiveness. Significant expenditures
loom in the future unless the observed under-investment in operation
and maintenance is halted. New programmes therefore emphasize
gradual ongoing infrastructure improvements, with the objective to
improve performance and ensure financial viability and physical
sustainability of irrigation.

In summary, recent efforts in the region to improve the performance
of irrigation systems have been dominated to a large extent by social
and institutional aspects but results have been somewhat
disappointing.

Other regions have often adopted a radically different approach. In
contrast with this model, IMT in other regions has often taken a very
different shape, with a deliberate effort to change the control logic of
the systems from the top down and the transfer of large units of the
systems to large water users associations. To a large extent,

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engineering and institutional innovations have been introduced in an
integrated and mutually reinforcing manner.

***

Interactions between institutional, managerial and physical structures
are increasingly debated. The prevailing view in recent years that, in
irrigation management, there are no technical problems, only
institutional and financial problems, is being challenged.

There is an emerging understanding that physical and institutional
reforms of the irrigation sector should be combined, and that
irrigation management transfer is not about transferring operation
functions only but also governance to the irrigation users and a
combination of the two at different levels. Rehabilitation is not
enough in many cases and, whether institutions determine the
technology or vice-versa, it is now acknowledged that technical
aspects deserve more attention. For some, in order to improve
irrigation performance, one must focus on management processes,
irrespective of the institutional setup. Others, including this paper,
argue that many problems are due to faulty design and operational
procedures, which must be corrected. Physical features are also seen
to possibly limit the scope of water sector reform and irrigation
management transfer through lack of control and reliability to
guarantee water allocations, poor performance or interfaces between
levels that do not allow service agreements, volumetric charges or
other water pricing systems to be established.

The recent debates at the International E-mail Conference on
Irrigation Management Transfer organized by FAO and the Interna-
tional Network on Participatory Irrigation Management (July-
October 2001) are an illustration of this new understanding. In their
concluding statement, the conference organizers stated that IMT
does indeed create an important opportunity to adopt needed
technical, managerial and financial modernization. Modernization
which is custom-designed to fit local needs and circumstances must
be an essential part of IMT programmes in many places if irrigation
systems and irrigated agriculture are to be sustainable. Even though

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many modernization activities may happen after formal transfer, this
should NOT be seen as an indication that somehow modernization is
less important or is not an essential part of IMT.

It is estimated that the existing infrastructure may have an impact on
the range of institutional options for reform: topics for research on
IMT identified at the conference included the relation between
infrastructure and institutional options, water scheduling and IMT
and volumetric water delivery. It was also noted that increasingly,
the emphasis in the design of irrigation organizations is turning
towards the introduction, primarily through contracts, of
professional management expertise in combination with new forms of
accountability and transparency towards users, and, perhaps, more
flexibility in delivery.

The performance or condition of many systems is a serious constraint
to the desirability of transfer for users or sustainability if the level of
agricultural performance cannot generate sufficient revenues for the
users to pay their expected contributions to operation and
maintenance of the schemes. The sustainability of the new water
users associations also depends on their capacity to provide an
adequate water delivery service, control and allocate water, and
provide an improved service to enable gains in agricultural
productivity. This is essential for the farmers to pay for the water and
for the associations to be financially viable.

Water rights and the necessity to satisfy different water uses with the
same primary infrastructure will also become a major issue, together
with obligations related to disposal and quality of effluents and other
environmental requirements. Future requirements of water resource
management, water scarcity, environment and agriculture will call
for radical changes in management and technology as well as in the
quality of water delivery service required by the users.

Rehabilitation, understood as reconstructing infrastructure as it was
originally, is thus often not a desirable option. Improvements in
infrastructure must be geared towards progressively and constantly
adapting the systems to changes in demand. However, IMT pro-

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grammes, in practice, are still often just a part of major rehabilitation
projects and a focus on maintenance issues has probably led to
neglecting issues related to the operation of irrigation systems.
Participation of users in decisions about system operations and water
scheduling should therefore be one of the main features of IMT. But
this participation will be very limited in scope if there is only partial
transfer or if IMT does not transfer governance over the entire
system, as a single unit of management.

The objective of technology design should be to provide
infrastructure that enables provision of an agreed level of service.
This includes enabling implementation of particular distribution
schedules as required by users for their agricultural operations. This
general service orientation called for in the sector will often require a
departure from established standard design procedures, a major
retraining effort for engineers and managers as well as the provision
of water users associations with competent advisory and consulting
services.

Some of the issues that need to be addressed in the sphere of design
and planning of irrigation systems are: can one design systems taking
into account human and institutional aspects and what would the
repercussion be on the type of technology? How does one produce
simple, transparent design and operational procedures? Does the
knowledge exist on how to design and implement service-oriented
water control and management? What are the tools and processes for
decision-making in the level of service, in operational rules, in
planning and design of rehabilitation works and how are the users
involved? How is the decision on service related to financial
decisions service fees or farmers contributions to operation,
maintenance or physical works? How is it related to plans to upgrade
management capacity?

Farmers service requirements are often met from other sources than
the intended delivery of the main surface systems. Farmers have
responded to economic changes, poor or inadequate service or
insufficient flows for intensive irrigation and tried to achieve
flexibility, reliability and volumes required for the adoption of

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modern cultivation practices or for freedom in cropping strategies
through illegal water trading, tampering with control structures,
tapping additional resources, pumping from canals, drains, borrow
pits etc. The explosion of groundwater irrigation is largely a response
by farmers to the lack of flexibility and the unreliability of the canal
systems. Managers also try to rectify management capacity and
design shortcomings through recycling and conjunctive use.

This is inevitable. Farmers subvert water distribution rules which
define patterns that do not match their feasible and desired goals.
Making water delivery match goals is important. Responding to
change requires adapting water distribution rules. Adoption of new
on-farm technology requires improved operation of the main and
conveyance systems. Inconsistent rules will also lead to inefficient
and inequitable water distribution. The users, on the other hand, must
accept the limitations on use imposed by water availability and the
features of the system.

These considerations call for a greater attention to an analysis of
operational rules at all levels in the system and particularly to their
articulation at the interface between the future irrigation service
providers and water users associations, to the necessity of improving
operations in the upper levels if the water users associations are to
be in a position to develop applicable rules and procedures, and to
the necessity of incorporating at all levels the farmers production
objectives.

The question whether the technical/hydraulic dimension of irrigation
can be brought under the control of agents focused on non-technical
user-derived objectives is central as this would characterize a
service-oriented management. The case for reassessing the design
standards, configuration and operational procedures at the moment of
transfer as a result of a review or resetting of both internal objectives
in terms of service with the water users and external objectives with
water resource institutions therefore seems to be compelling.

***


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Design processes have been a problem in the past. This paper shows
that administrative and behavioural reasons such as lack of
experience, accountability and feedback from operation of designers
and lack of accountability of operators and managers to the users are
partly to blame. IMT can correct the root cause of institutional,
administrative and behavioural problems but institutional measures
cannot correct existing infrastructure.

Modernization of an irrigation system is defined as the act of
upgrading or improving the system capacity to enable it to respond
appropriately to the water service demands of the current times,
keeping in perspective future needs, or as a process of technical and
managerial upgrading (as opposed to mere rehabilitation) of
irrigation schemes with the objective to improve resource utilization
(labour, water, economics, environment) and water delivery service
to farms. This involves institutional, organizational and technological
changes and implies changes at all operational levels of irrigation
schemes from water supply and conveyance to the farm level. The
objective is to improve irrigation services to farmers and
improvement in canal operation will generally be a critical first step
in the process. In the context of IMT, modernization is related to the
process of transformation from supply-driven to service-oriented
water delivery and to changes in governance of the systems for goal
setting, which includes the decision on the service.

Modern design processes select the configuration and physical
components in light of a well-defined, realistic operational plan
based on the service concept and use of advanced hydraulic
engineering, agronomy and social concepts to arrive at the most
simple and workable solution. The most important issue is the
system ability to achieve a specific level of operational performance
at all levels within the system. A proper operational plan is the
instrument that combines the various perspectives and reconciles
expectations between users, project manager, field operators and the
country policy objectives.

The second step is the decisions about water delivery, i.e. the
flexibility (frequency, rate and duration) at all levels. Flexibility

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distinguishes and characterizes classes of service quality from
rotation to on-demand and is most closely related to improvements in
agricultural performance, crop diversification etc. Service
agreements together with strategic management are increasingly
adopted to encapsulate the iterative decision process on level of
service and associated financial decisions, accountability, monitoring
and evaluation as well as plans to upgrade management and
infrastructure.

***

This publication is intended to be of interest to all stakeholders of the
irrigation sector: irrigation agencies, financing institutions, water
users associations, planners, designers, training and research
institutions. It is hoped that it will stimulate and bring a useful
contribution to the debate on irrigation sector reform and
modernization and to the success of efforts to improve the
performance of irrigation and to provide a better service to the
farmers, by increasing the awareness of the critical importance of
proper modernization procedures and design criteria.

Bangkok, August 2002 THIERRY FACON
Water Management Officer
FAO Regional Office for
Asia and the Pacific



13
PART I: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
I. THE CAUSES OF THE POOR PERFORMANCE
OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS: AN UNFINISHED DEBATE
Irrigation systems in many parts of the world are
known to be performing well below their
potential. (ICID past president)
Most analytical reports on the irrigation and drainage sector start
with a laudatory statement on the contribution of irrigation and
drainage to world food security during the last three decades and an
observation on the declining growth of irrigated lands worldwide.
1
These are followed by a discussion on the projected contribution of
irrigation to meeting the food and fibre needs of the world population
by 2025. Next is the observation that the overall performance of
irrigation and drainage investments has too often fallen short of the
expectations of planners, governments and financing institutions
alike (FAO). The consensus between irrigation analysts ends at this
point. Most recent reports differ on the causes of the poor
performance of irrigation projects. The focus may reflect the main
interest or, in some cases, the bias or ideology of the individual
author or of the agency. This report moves straightforward to an

1
Worldwide 267 million hectares were irrigated in 1997, or about 18
percent of cultivated lands. In the 1970s, the area of irrigated land expanded
faster than 2 percent per year. This rate slowed down to about 1.8 percent in
the 1980s and has now fallen to about 1.4 percent per year. FAO estimates
that the rate of expansion will continue to drop to less than 1 percent in the
next decade. There are, however, large regional variations in the rates of
expansion of irrigated lands. Out of the worldwide increase of 18 million ha
during the five-year period 1990-95, about 13.5 million (75 percent) were in
Asia. Irrigated areas in India alone increased by 8 million ha during that
period, at a rate of 3.5 percent per year. China showed an increase of 1.8
million ha during the same period. A large part of the increase in Asian
countries during the last decade is due to the explosive use of groundwater.
An unsolved question is whether some areas served by the existing surface
irrigation systems have been counted twice.

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historical review of the causes of the poor performance of the
irrigation systems that have been identified in many reports since the
great expansion of irrigation in developing countries in the 1960s and
1970s.

This report first presents the reasons of the poor performance that are
rooted in the perceived weaknesses of design and management
concepts of irrigation projects. It then presents the administrative and
behavioural reasons through a review of the critics made by some
analysts against other groups, such as design engineers and financial
institutions.

Perceived deficiencies in technical design and management

A forty-year-old report of the former Office National des Irrigations
in Morocco noted that the question of how to make the most rational
use of large investments in the construction of dams and large
irrigation projects was a matter of great concern worldwide: It
became evident during the 1950s that even with the installation of an
expensive irrigation infrastructure, water use was below the
expected level. This is attributed to the need for a programme of land
consolidation in conjunction with the irrigation investment. At that
time, irrigation infrastructure built by the governments consisted
only of primary and secondary canals, with a few farm outlets.
Farmers were then expected to bring water to their own plots by
building tertiary canals and ditches. This type of investment without
on-farm development was the model for irrigation development in a
number of countries in the 1960s. While this model promoted the
rapid growth of irrigation, it was obviously inadequate in the
countries with smallholders, who could not organize themselves for
the financing and implementation of on-farm works and adopt
modern irrigation water delivery. Farmers were obliged to continue
with century-old methods of cultivation and irrigation fostering
mediocre crop yields. This cause of poor performance was partly
corrected by the systematic construction of the tertiary system by the
irrigation agencies with, in some cases, the financial or labour
participation of the farmers. This practice is now well accepted by
national governments and donor agencies. A few countries, such as

15
Morocco and Thailand, decided in the 1960s and 1970s to proceed
with a consolidation programme of the irrigable lands before
undertaking the construction of the tertiary system and on-farm
works. Some form of land consolidation is essential for optimal use
of water in projects where excessive land fragmentation prevails.

Extension of the construction of the irrigation systems down to the
tertiary systems was not enough, however, to push the performance
of irrigation systems to their expected level. Since the most apparent
problems of water management are wastage of water below the farm
outlets, the common response in the 1970s was to promote on-farm
development, including introduction of modern water application
methods and precise land levelling. Another response at that time
was to promote the creation of water user groups at the level of
tertiary canals. External assistance supported these approaches in
countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines. This response
addressed only part of the problem, since no efforts were made to
improve management at the higher level. A third technical response
to the disappointing performance of schemes consisted in refining
measuring techniques. Since it was widely accepted that water
measurement is essential to effective water management, many
donor-supported projects finance the installation of measuring
devices at each branching point of irrigation systems. However,
water measurement in irrigation systems should be adapted to the
actual field conditions to be effective. The conditions in irrigation
systems are very different from flow measurements in hydrology and
hydraulics research. Repetitive use of conventional measuring
devices requires training and dedication of operators and does not
prevent malfunctioning of control structures. These and other
developments in the technical hardware contributed little, however,
to solving the problems encountered in irrigation schemes. In the
1970s certain leading professionals started to pay attention to what
they described as the software of irrigation systems.

Conventional engineering solutions failed to solve the problem of
irrigation performance and this progressively led to a new way of
thinking in the 1980s which is still strongly entrenched among the
irrigation community. Widespread wisdom has it that the poor

16
performance of irrigation systems is due predominantly to
management. A keynote speaker at an ICID congress in 1992 said:
There is now a wide recognition that deficiencies in management
and related institutional problems, rather than the technology of
irrigation, were the chief constraints of poor performance of
irrigation systems.
2
This statement was cited and hardened by the
author of an article on the problems of irrigation in developing
countries, which observed: In the developing countries, the heads of
the agencies concerned are usually engineers, but they often lack the
knowledge of critically important non-technical factors such as the
social structure of the farmers to be benefited, economic constraints
at local and national levels, and environmental issues (Kirpich). A
discussant of that article went even further by stating that the
technical solutions to the irrigation and drainage projects were trivial
when compared to political, institutional and cultural problems. He
therefore recommended that degrees for professional engineering
include courses in anthropology, business development and
economics. The support given to the creation of the International
Irrigation Management Institute in 1984 was based on the emerging
consensus among irrigation professionals that most solutions were to
be found in the field of management. The focus of IIMI has
continuously been on management, and irrigation technology
received a very low level of attention since the elevation of IIMI
activities to those of IWMI.

Admittedly, there are important management-related and institutional
deficiencies in irrigation, such as conflicts between farmers and
irrigation agencies, poor cost recovery of investments and recurrent
costs, lack of coordination between agriculture and irrigation
agencies, and lack of farmer participation in design and management.
However, the advocates of the key role of management in irrigation

2
C. Burt (1999) strongly disagrees with this statement and comments that
such statements are common in part because traditional civil engineers
have botched so many irrigation project designs and modernization efforts.
The result is now worldwide programmes which are promoting the
development of water user associations that ignore the relationship between
technical and institutional worlds.

17
performance have yet to fully explore the technical deficiencies in
the design of irrigation projects. These technical deficiencies will be
discussed in Part II of this document.

Administrative and behavioural reasons

Once the technical solutions to the poor performance of irrigation
projects were apparently exhausted, some analysts started looking at
the professional competence and capability of other experts to
achieve high irrigation performance. Engineers were the first obvious
target of these critics. However, irrigation agencies and donor
organizations were also strongly criticized.

Criticism of engineers

Box 1: Not by engineers alone

For all its impressive engineering, modern water development has adhered
to a fairly simple formula: estimate the demand for water and then built
new supply projects to meet it. It is an approach that ignores concern
about human equity, the health of ecosystems, other species and the
welfare of future generations. In a world of resource abundance, it may
have served humanity adequately. In the new world of scarcity, it is
fuelling conflict and degradation. Policymakers have vastly underestimated
the influence of water scarcity on economics progress, food security, and
regional peace and stability. Many have yet to realize that water problems
can no longer be fixed by engineers alone. (Postel)

Social scientists have generally been in the frontline of criticism
against engineers. Diemer (1996) states that irrigation engineers
know little about the actual principles of water distribution in
schemes in developing countries. They often assume that, in their
schemes, which are mostly gravity-irrigated, there is no better way of
distributing water than according to the rules they had in mind when
they designed and built the irrigation systems. The design procedure
focuses on crop and construction issues with the aim of reducing
expenditure on construction, management and maintenance. The
engineers usually base their design solely on physical data. The only
social components likely to be considered are demographic

18
information (such as labour force and land tenure) and the potential
economic and financial yield of the scheme and plots. Empirical data
on the diversity in dynamics of farms, group of irrigators,
organizational patterns and local political structures are rarely
available.

The revised FAO guidelines on the preparation of irrigation projects
support these views: Building ownership and commitment through
participation has often been difficult to achieve in the past. The
conventional sequence of identification/preparation carried out
against tight deadlines by external planning teams has seldom
allowed time for genuine participation either by government staff or
farmers. On implementation, government engineers, for their part,
have usually seen irrigation only from an engineering rather than a
farming or social perspective. They have been reluctant to adopt
participatory approaches with farmers, mainly because of a
misplaced belief that farmers are unable to understand or make any
contribution to technical matters, or because of concern that
participation might delay implementation or result in design changes
that compromise the quality of the final product.

According to Diemer, the institutional contexts of scheme
development and scheme management do not encourage irrigation
engineers to acquire or disseminate knowledge on actual distribution
practices either. Foreign engineers are usually contracted by donor
agencies to produce designs for new schemes or to supervise
construction. They are rarely involved in the management of their
schemes and so cannot incorporate feedback on the distribution
practices into their design methods and their assumptions about
management. This lack of feedback has led to many schemes
deteriorating quickly and needing rehabilitation after only a few
years. In theory, such rehabilitation provides an opportunity to take
into account the management patterns of operators and irrigators. In
practice, rehabilitation simply re-establishes the physical
configuration of the original system.

Engineers contracted to produce a feasibility report will hesitate to
describe a proposal as unfeasible because they risk losing their

19
contracts, either for the design and implementation of the proposal or
for the assessment of new proposals. Helweg goes as far as accusing
the consulting firms from developed countries of wasting millions of
dollars because they lack cultural literacy.

The professional context explains why design irrigation engineers
know little about actual distribution processes. It is sufficient and
even more beneficial to them to accept current assumptions about the
cultivator and his crops, to see farmers as a group and to accept the
need for central management of the schemes, because these
assumptions fit the goals of the donor agency and the recipient
government. The designers interest lies in maintaining the status
quo.

Engineers from government agencies have also been the targets of
the critics: because the funding of most irrigation agencies is
dependent on budget allocations and not on their performance in
water delivery, most national engineers have little incentives to
wrangle with farmers, colleagues and politicians to improve water
delivery. Operation usually deviates from the assumptions in design.
Political patronage and corruption are endemic in many schemes
because they form part of the national political landscape.
Maintaining the status quo is also the interest of national engineers.
(Diemer)

Criticism of financial institutions

For a deeper understanding of technical assistance in irrigation one
needs to look beyond the engineers to the donor agencies that
manage the public development funds and to the national
departments of planning, agriculture or water that set objectives for
agricultural development. Together, these institutions define the
terms of reference that the irrigation engineers are contracted to
implement. Almost invariably, these bureaucracies are the initiators
of the large schemes. After conclusive feasibility studies,
calculations of the possible internal rates of return of various design
options, and negotiations on funding, the donor agency allocates the
millions of dollars requested.

20
Some critics suggest that financial institutions should review their
lending policies and priorities: Most of the financial institutions
tend to give priority to hardware development probably because
software development is more difficult to plan and implement. They
argue that software development is essential and should receive
higher priority. This view is supported by the statement, similar to
the one from ICID quoted earlier, that most irrigation projects fail to
realize their targets not because of engineering shortcomings but
rather due to the local organizations shortcomings (Anukul-
armphai)
3
.

Nijman has studied the links between donor agencies, national
governments and irrigation agencies and their connections with their
environments, with the aim of identifying the causes of the annual
loss of million of dollars in the irrigation sector. Several points stand
out:

i) The first is that development banks and other donor agencies have
so much public capital at their disposal that is earmarked for
investment in developing countries that their officers have difficulty
finding sufficient outlets and are under constant pressure to
maximize loans and grants. This pressure often adversely affects the
quality of the investment decisions. Real-life feasibility and
functionality of the investments, as opposed to the feasibility and
functionality assumed in the design reports, are not assessed.
Performance of the agency and of similar schemes is ignored.

ii) Investment appraisal techniques such as the economic rate of
return, cost-benefit analysis and related sensitivity analysis did not

3
This view, expressed by a high-level expert well known in Southeast Asia,
have been diametrically opposed by Professor V. Anbumozhi from the
Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Tokyo, in his intervention
during the PIM Electronic Conference: In the rehabilitation/modernization
programmes, it is very common to find that major emphasis has been placed
on water users. The importance of engineering aspects is overlooked or
minimized. There are several reasons for that, one of which is the donor-
driven approach, in which software components are emphasized and
hardware components are underestimated.

21
render any of the cases (studied by Nijman) unfeasible, as these
studies were done after the political decision had been taken to
construct a scheme at a certain site. The studies were used to justify
the subsidies for irrigation, not to improve economic decision-
making.

iii) The fact that development banks are under pressure to transfer
public funds to developing countries, plus the fact that much
irrigation investment is politically motivated, have instilled an
attitude of rent-seeking in the national irrigation agencies. (Diemer)

The performance of international research and donor organizations is
criticized in even stronger terms: A number of international
organizations sponsored regional task forces and technical
assistance committees...They, however, did not even try to address
long-term social and planning issues, which could have provided
comprehensive solutions to some of the [water management]
problems. On balance, none of the international organizations made
a decisive impact on water management in the water-short areas of
the world (Tibor). This rather pessimistic statement lacks fairness,
as it does not recognize the contribution of these organizations to the
promotion of user participation in irrigation management and of the
service concept in the definition of modernization since the mid
1990s.

The slow recognition of design as a main reason of the poor
performance of irrigation systems

Few writers have challenged the widespread view that managerial
and institutional deficiencies, not the technology of irrigation, are the
main causes of poor performance of irrigation projects. However, a
few authors have consistently alerted the irrigation community to the
importance of technology in the performance of irrigation projects:

i) The question of whether irrigation performance can be improved
solely through improved management or whether physical facilities
need to be upgraded as well was raised in a World Bank technical
paper fifteen years ago (Plusquellec 1985). That paper was cautious

22
enough to state that the different approaches to design of irrigation
projects have different managerial and financial requirements and
should not be used indiscriminately. It examined the design and
management of water distribution at farm level and the relation of
the main system to the tertiary system. Finally it concluded that
management alone may not substantially improve irrigation
performance, unless combined with physical improvements, some at
a modest cost.

ii) An audio-visual training programme on how to improve the
operation of canal irrigation systems was produced by the external
training department of the World Bank in 1988. It stated that the
planning, design and construction process must produce a system and
conditions capable of accommodating effective management
practices. Although significant results were achieved through
improved system management in several pilot projects in the 1980s,
the programme concluded that changes in physical infrastructure
were often needed to push the performance of these systems to a
higher level.

iii) Examples of unrealistic designs and operational procedures were
discussed in detail in a World Bank technical paper (Plusquellec et
al. 1994). Many designs are difficult to manage under real field
conditions. Many failures and problems are caused by a design
approach that pays insufficient attention to operational aspects.

iv) The ICID publication on automation of canal irrigation systems
states that one of the main factors contributing to poor performance
is lack of effective water control (Goussard). Without further
elaboration on that issue, that publication moves to the discussion of
the problems of canal operation and presents a state-of-the-art review
of the concepts and technologies applicable to automatic operation of
canal irrigation systems above farm level.

The author of an IWMI publication on the dilemmas of irrigation
systems design (Horst 1998) raises rather unusual and provocative
questions: Is management really the crux of irrigation problems? ...
Do we need to apply cosmetic surgery by only trying to improve the

23
management environment without considering the technology? Is it
not time to examine the root of the problem: the design of irrigation
systems?

Horst recognizes the link between design and management by raising
the question of whether it would be possible to design irrigation
systems taking into account human and institutional aspects and, if
so, what the repercussion on the type of technology would be. He
raises some valid questions about complicated technologies and
operational procedures, and advocates the simplification of design
and operation. He further states that the underlying reasons for
writing his book were the combination of denial of the importance of
technology vis--vis management, increasing indifference to system
design and lack of transparency of technology and operational
procedures.

Despite the evidence of the negative effect of inappropriate design
technology on irrigation performance, it is still puzzling that not
much attention has been given to that aspect by policymakers and
donors, and even by research institutions. The International
Programme for Technological Research on Irrigation and Drainage
was created at the initiative of the International Commission on
Irrigation and Drainage to specifically address the technical aspects
of irrigation research and development. Modernization was one of
the themes identified as a major gap in irrigation research in
developing countries. However, that theme did not really attract the
interest of donors. That the international research institutes involved
in irrigation research do not attach more importance to the issue of
technology and design of irrigation projects is a matter of concern.
The 1998 SWIM paper prepared jointly by IWMI and IRRI staff
discusses five main strategies or options for increasing the effective
use of irrigation water in rice irrigation systems. That otherwise
excellent paper is weak in discussing the rehabilitation and
modernization of irrigation projects. It refers to an evaluation of
paddy irrigation systems in Asia (Rice) by the Operations Evaluation
Department (OED) of the World Bank and cites its questionable
conclusion that poor operation and management have a negligible
impact on irrigated crop production. It fails, however, to report the

24
main conclusion of the OED study, which was that faulty designs
were the main causes of performance far below expected targets.

It is also a matter of concern that, until recently, the importance of
appropriate and necessary technology was largely left out of the
discussion in the intensive campaign for the transfer of irrigation
management to user associations under the World Bank initiative
called the International Network for Participatory Irrigation
Management.

The dawn of a new approach to irrigation design and
management

The historical background discussed above is rather pessimistic, and
may leave not much hope that a new approach to irrigation
management is going to be adopted worldwide soon. However, the
efforts deployed during the last few years by highly motivated
individuals from international organizations are encouraging:

i) In the 1990s, the Information Techniques for Irrigation Systems
(ITIS) of IIMI together with FAO and national research institutions
organized a number of international meetings in Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Malaysia, Morocco and India to exchange experiences on the
application of information techniques in irrigation systems and on
practical improvements for manual operation.

ii) The FAO Office for Asia and the Pacific organized an expert
consultation on Modernization of irrigation systems past
experiences and future options in 1996 with the aims to examine the
various aspects of modernization and to provide a framework for
assessing the need and possibility for adopting the measures required
for modernization. This consultation led to the adoption of a multi-
disciplinary definition of modernization. There was also a consensus
on a number of conclusions including: a) the lack of an appropriate
knowledge base to provide adequate forecast of the impact of
specific modernization steps; b) the need for essential institutional
and policy changes, such as accountability of providers of water
services, enabling legislation and enforcement capability; c) the need

25
to expand training from policymakers to farmers; and d) the
development of upgraded design and procedure manuals.

iii) In 1994, the World Bank published a technical paper entitled
Modern water control in irrigation: concepts, issues and
applications to stimulate debate among professionals and to increase
awareness of the potential of modern technologies for water control
and sustainable agriculture. The authors argued that modern design
was a thought process which started with the definition of a proper
operational plan based on the concept of service.

iv) In response to the need to document the impact of modernization
on the performance of irrigation projects, in 1996 the World Bank
financed a comparative study of 16 projects. A new method of rapid
assessment based on a well-structured questionnaire was developed
and used for that study, which evaluates both the input/output
external indicators and internal indicators that reflect the mechanisms
of operation and management. That study was seminal for the series
of training courses on irrigation modernization currently carried out
by FAO in Asian countries (Thailand, Iran, Viet Nam).

The above studies and international events remain the initiatives of a
few individual experts or staff members (which may last only as long
as the staff members remain in place) rather than the result of a
policy shared at the highest decision level of their organizations. The
need to improve the performance of irrigation projects through a re-
visioning of management and design is not given a high priority on
the agendas of international forums on water and supporting
organizations, such as the World Water Council and the Global
Water Partnership. The low profile of irrigation in the debates of the
World Water Forum in The Hague in March 2000 contrasting with
the fierce debates about water supply and privatization is disturbing.
The background paper A vision of water for food and rural
development presented at the Hague water forum is a
comprehensive document dealing with the food demand and the
growth in water supply for irrigation and rural development over the
next 25 years. The proposed comprehensive strategy to realize the
vision includes actions for the development of institutions and

26
human resources and for private-sector development, investment in
infrastructure and investment policies. However, the paper is very
brief on the deficiencies of existing systems and it fails to present the
magnitude of the investments required for rehabilitating and
improving the existing irrigation infrastructure. The paper rightly
states that the technology to supply crops with an optimal amount of
water is already available in drip and sprinkler systems but concedes
that there is little chance that all the gravity areas will be converted
to more efficient pressure techniques.
4
The proposed strategy to
realize the vision of water for food suggests direct investments to
increase water productivity in a number of areas, including the
modernization of irrigation and drainage systems, particularly in
water-scarce areas, and the dry-season irrigation schemes in
Southeast Asia. This seems to ignore the deficient performance of
irrigation projects in the humid tropics during the wet season.
Overall, the recommendations of the specialized FAO agency at the
Water and Sustainable Development International conference in
Paris in March 1998 have not been well echoed in the Hague forum,
a highly visible international event.

Unfortunately, few large-scale irrigation systems provide on-demand
irrigation service to farmers, which is a precondition for efficient
water use. There is an urgent need to modernize and upgrade the
water control system in most large irrigation schemes by introducing
modern management principles, such as volumetric water charges, in
order to facilitate crop diversification. Application of new
technology generally requires a conducive environment, including
knowledge, finance and markets, and needs to be inserted in
adequate policies that lift the constraints of agriculture (H. Wolter).

It is encouraging that the topic of modernization was given full
recognition at the electronic conference organized by INPIM and

4
The Vision paper suggests that making available at low cost and
workable in the gravity systems the networks of sensors, processors and
controllers connected to computers controlling water flows and nutrient
supplies in drip and sprinkler systems responding to real time crop
requirements can considerably increase water productivity.

27
FAO in September 2001
5
. Recognizing the role of the users in the
modernization process and the importance of modernization for the
sustainability of water user associations is a major step forward.

Considerable efforts have been made by lending agencies to revise
their strategy for the water sector and to encourage governments to
reform legislation and the role of agencies. These efforts at the global
water level are now followed by work to define a new irrigation
strategy and to identify the actions needed to implement it. The India
Irrigation Sector Review in 1998 is a major initiative of the World
Bank in that direction. In a preface to this review, the Indian ministry
of Water Resources emphasizes that what is needed is a total
revolution in irrigated agriculture, with more focus on the improve-
ment of the performance of existing facilities and provision of a
client-focused irrigation service. It supports the recommendations of:
launching planned programmes, linked with irrigation
management transfer to water user associations and participation
in decisions and investment costs by these associations, to
rehabilitate and then progressively modernize the irrigation
systems and
forming water user associations at the minor and distribution
levels and federating them to provide advice on water
management at higher hydraulic levels.

These recommendations encompass the most important elements of
the new strategy, which will be developed in this paper: the need to
shift toward a service-oriented mode of operation and to involve the
users in the modernization of the irrigation systems.


II. PERFORMANCE OF IRRIGATION SYSTEMS

Most research studies on performance of irrigation have aimed to
monitor the performance over time, for example to determine the
impact of a management change, or to analyse the performance of

5
Documents and proceedings can be consulted at the following URL:
http://www.FAO.org/ag/agl/aglw/waterinstitutions/toconf.stm

28
comparable projects. These evaluations mostly focus on an analysis
of inputs and outputs of irrigation projects (water, land, labour, value
of production, cost of operation and maintenance). These indicators
are often referred to as external indicators. These indicators in
general do not provide significant information when comparing
projects. Obviously projects producing fruit and vegetables have a
better productivity than single-crop rice projects. In this chapter, we
refer to the performance of irrigation projects compared to the values
expected at appraisal or feasibility stage. In Chapter 13, we will
define and discuss the use of internal indicators as a tool for the
diagnosis of irrigation projects.

The World Bank, as other donor agencies, evaluates the performance
of all its operations at the end of the implementation phase, shortly
after final disbursements. These evaluations undertaken by its
independent Operations Evaluation Department compare outcome
then with expectations at appraisal.

Out of the 430 irrigation projects that have been approved by the
World Bank since 1950, 313 have been the subject of a post-
evaluation. About two thirds of the evaluated projects have had a
satisfactory outcome, which is better than the average for all Bank-
supported agricultural projects, but slightly worse than the figure for
all Bank projects. However, since the late 1980s, the Bank projects
are rated for not only their outcome but also their sustainability and
institutional development. About 35 percent of the irrigation projects
were rated sustainable and about 35 percent would have a
satisfactory institutional development impact. These results cast
serious doubt about the long-term performance of irrigation projects.

Completion of a project is an opportune time to assess the extent to
which operations achieve their stated objectives and to draw valuable
lessons for the future. However, conclusions about the technical and
economic efficiency of irrigation projects are still speculative at the
time when the Bank makes its final disbursements. Impact
evaluations are done for a small proportion of operations at full
development about five years after completion to determine project
impact and sustainability. Impact evaluations are particularly

29
appropriate for irrigation projects whose benefits are long to mature.
In 1987, an assessment study of the performance of large-scale
gravity irrigation projects was carried out in six countries in different
climatic and social environments. An important lesson of that study
was the need for more realistic assumptions in the adoption of design
standards, especially irrigation efficiency, which in turn affect the
cropping intensity, the overall productivity of the project and its
economic viability. The main cause for the lower-than-expected
performance in economic terms was related to the frequent
overoptimistic assumptions regarding efficiency, and the often
overlooked impact of poor physical performance in terms of water
distribution and concurrent poor construction standards on
agricultural productivity (Plusquellec 1990).

The findings of the above study were confirmed by a formal review
of 21 evaluations of irrigation projects carried out up to 1990. The
review showed that the performance of irrigation projects in
economic terms had been less than satisfactory at full development
than at either appraisal or completion of their investment phase. For
the 21 projects the average outcomes were 17.7 percent at appraisal,
14.8 percent at project completion and only 9.3 percent at impact
evaluation. However, their social impact had been substantial and
their contribution to food security and poverty alleviation was not in
doubt.

Overall efficiency values used for Bank-supported projects in India
during the peak lending period 1975-95 were systematically above
50 percent. Most of these projects were rated unsatisfactory at
completion when OED started to attach more importance to the links
between physical and economic performance of irrigation projects.

Another OED study carried out in 1997 examined the impact of
investments in six gravity irrigation schemes in Southeast Asia
(Rice). The estimates of economic rates of return not only fell short
of appraisal projections by substantial margins, but were all below 8
percent. In one case, the economic rate of return was even negative
because the project could not supply half of its design command
area. The study stated that the dominant paradigm for government-

30
operated gravity-fed irrigation schemes in the humid tropics was to
ascribe the low economic return of irrigation projects to poor
operation and maintenance and inadequate farmer organizations.
Findings from this 1997 review contradicted this model. The reasons
identified for the performance gaps were falling paddy prices, over-
optimism about the crop area to be served and projects design faults,
including the choice of unsuitable technology.

Box 2: The results of a performance assessment study in six countries

The study covered six countries, three in arid and semi-arid zones, Mexico,
Morocco and Sudan, and three in tropical zones, Colombia, the Philippines
and Thailand. (The Bank did not finance the projects in Colombia and
Sudan.)

Water use efficiencies: Overall project efficiency was re-estimated at or
below 40 percent in all cases, with the exception of the Gezira project in
Sudan and the gravity and sprinkler projects in Morocco. These values are
between 50 and 85 percent of appraisal estimates. For example, the
overall efficiency used during the appraisal of the Lampao project in
Thailand was 58 percent for paddy (and 51 percent for other crops) and is
now estimated at 28 percent. The high operational performance of the
Gezira project in Sudan is due to the specific nature of the soils and the
innovative design of the minor night-storage canals. The relatively high
performance of the project in Morocco is due to the sophisticated water
control. (None of these projects had facilities for significant reuse of
drained or groundwater.)

Cropping intensity: In all the projects, with one exception in Mexico, the
actual cropping intensity was lower than expected at appraisal. Actual
cropping intensity was substantially lower at impact evaluation than was
estimated at project completion for full development.

Economic rates of return: The economic rates of return were recalculated
at impact evaluation for eight projects. The rates were about the same at
appraisal for the two sprinkler projects in Morocco, but less than the
overoptimistic projections re-estimated at completion. The lower viability
of the other projects was adversely affected by lower cropping intensities
than expected at completion, lower production and lower prices.

Contrary to well-entrenched ideas, actual low-price commodities
were not the key factor driving the economic rates of return to low
levels. For one of the projects, substituting the inflated rice prices at

31
appraisal for the actual prices at completion lifted the re-estimated
rate of return by only one point. Another fact which depressed the
economic rate of return of these projects was that diversification out
of paddy failed to occur at any scheme. Even if the 1980 projections
of the price of rice had been realized, a combination of lower-than-
expected production and lack of diversification would nevertheless
have undermined the economic viability of the investments. That
study, which was the more perspicacious of the OED studies on
irrigation, was completed when lending for the irrigation sector fell
to its lowest historical level. Its findings are still overlooked in the
policy discussions on the water and irrigation sectors.


III. A REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS

The objective of this chapter is to discuss the validity of the
criticisms of the international organizations in their support of
irrigation development. This chapter reviews the policies and
procedures of lending agencies that may affect the performance of
irrigation projects. Since the FAO Cooperative Programme
(FAO/CP) assists the governments in the preparation of most
agricultural projects financed by the World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank and other donor agencies, the FAO/CP
guidelines are also examined.

1. The World Bank

The lack of an irrigation policy paper: The World Bank has not
issued any paper on irrigation policy during its thirty years of lending
for that sector, although irrigation has accounted for about 10 percent
of its total lending.
6

7


6
Lending for irrigation by the World Bank became significant in the 1960s
and rose dramatically to over 250 projects in the 1970s and 1980s. Average
annual lending more than trebled in the 1970-80s compared to the 1960s.
Since then lending for irrigation has fallen considerably. During the five-
year period FY1995-99, the World Bank had only 39 projects for irrigation

32
During the period of expansion of irrigation, between 1970 and the
early 1980s, the Central Department of the World Bank stressed
mostly the importance of drainage and greater cost recovery. Cost
recovery was particularly salient for the Bank. Policy discussions on
cost recovery dominated the debate on irrigation during that period.
In 1993, the World Bank published a policy paper on water resources
management. The issue of irrigation water pricing generated consid-
erable debate during the review process of the paper. The paper
advocates a comprehensive approach to water resources, decentral-
ization, stakeholder participation and environmental protection.
However, a water policy paper is not a substitute for an irrigation
paper, which should provide sector-specific guidance on diagnosing
and improving the performance of irrigation projects. The only
reference to modern irrigation systems in the water policy paper is
made for the objective of pursuing pricing policies that encourage
conservation and efficient use of water.

As advocated in this paper, there is a strong need to move from a
broad water strategy to the specifics of an irrigation strategy and to
adopt a long-term perspective for the improvement and sustainability
of irrigated agriculture. Some countries such as India and Brazil,
which have developed an irrigation policy with the collaboration of
the World Bank, are showing the lead in the right direction.

Pressure to lend: The donor agencies are frequently criticized for
their pressure to lend. That issue is frequently addressed within these
organizations and strongly rejected by their high-level management.

with an annual average lending reaching US$750 million because of a few
large-size operations in China, India and Mexico. Lending in the last three
years has fallen to about US$300 million.
7
The 1993 OED review explained this deficiency by the resistance from
Operations Department which saw an irrigation policy paper as an attempt
by economists (from the Central Projects Department) to interfere with the
freedom of engineers to do their jobs. The reviewers pointed out that
irrigation is the most variegated and site-specific sub-sector of agriculture.
Therefore they argued there are, by nature, few generalizations that apply to
irrigation as a whole. Irrigation requires maximum ingenuity to solve the
specific problems of specific sites (OED).

33
However, any task manager and member of a preparation or
appraisal mission is aware of the consequences of a negative
evaluation. The efforts of all the members of the mission naturally
concur to make the project attractive.

The Bank evaluates the viability of its supported projects in terms of
technical, economic, financial and environmental viability. The key
parameter of these evaluations has consistently been the estimation
of the project economic rate of return, which should exceed the
opportunity cost. As mentioned in Chapter 2, a PhD thesis found that
the investment appraisal techniques did not render any of the case
studied unfeasible, as the studies were done after the political
decision had been taken to construct a scheme at a certain site. This
strong criticism deserves some comments. On the one hand, the
projects examined by the Bank and not submitted to its board for
approval, whatever the reasons, are not entered in Bank statistics. It
is therefore impossible to determine the proportion of projects that
have been rejected because they were not justified economically. On
the other hand, senior Bank staff and consulting firms are familiar
with the sensitivity of rate of return calculation. They have gained
the expertise needed for exceeding the rate-of-return threshold
value by manipulating the key estimated parameters which are
used for its calculation, within reasonable limits. This has always
been well known but very few designers or Bank staff members have
ever pleaded guilty until recently
8
. The Thai government rejected the
Irrigation XIII project after its appraisal by the Bank because of
overproduction of rice and sharply declining world prices in the early
1980s. If approved, this marginally justified project would have been
rated unsatisfactory at completion. Most of the projects that are
dropped during preparation are discarded because of political or
other government considerations.


8
The South Asia area manager of a consulting firm wrote: It is a scourge
of irrigation projects in Asia that the original cost-benefit estimates are
seldom honest, water never reaches much of the area notified to be
irrigated, crop productivity increase is less than expected, and
environmental and social damage is far more than expected.

34
Use of overoptimistic assumptions during design and appraisal:
The use of overoptimistic assumptions during project design and
evaluation was noted in Chapter 1. This point has been well empha-
sized in some country irrigation studies. For example, the India
irrigation sector review in 1998 stated that there was a tendency to
overstate water availability through the analysis procedures used
because of social pressures to maximize area coverage and because
irrigation efficiency was systematically overestimated. The same
India review stated that dependability of water was based on
averages rather than on statistical analysis of demand, which would
better show the peak demand in dry years, a point which will be
examined further in this paper.

2. The Asian Development Bank

In 1998, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) published a working
paper The Bank Policy on Water after intensive consultation with
other policy stakeholders, including member countries, the private
sector, NGOs and other external support agencies.
9
These
consultations result in the formulation of principles of effective water
policy, which includes the delegation of water services to
autonomous and accountable public, private or cooperative agencies
providing measured water services to their customers for an
appropriate fee. The ADB paper identifies the main challenges to
meet these objectives as: i) how to increase investments in new water
delivery systems that will effectively meet customer demand; ii) how
to upgrade and manage existing systems to reduce demand and run
more efficiently; and iii) how to reduce water pollution through
recycling. The consultations pointed out the need for higher
efficiency in irrigation requiring policies and legal provisions on
water rights. The paper states that successful modernization of

9
Almost 20 percent of past ADB lending has been invested in water-related
projects, of which about half for irrigation. The water-sector share of ADB
lending has, however, declined substantially over the past 15 years from
more than 30 percent of total lending in the early 1980s to an average of 15
percent in the 1990s. The volume of lending for the water sector has even
declined in real terms.

35
irrigation systems will generally require viable cycles of investment,
operation and management by autonomous and accountable service
agencies, with user participation. Explicitly, the ADB water policy
recognizes:
the need to shift toward a service-oriented mode of operation
of irrigation systems;
the importance of modernization of irrigation systems for the
successful implementation of the global water policy; and
the importance to involve the users in the modernization
process.

3. The FAO Cooperative Programme guidelinesIdentification
and preparation of irrigation projects (1984)

Like other financing institutions, the World Bank requires that
feasibility studies for conventional specific projects be completed
before appraisal. National or international consulting firms common-
ly assist borrowers in the preparation of projects. Although this phase
in the planning process is in principle the responsibility of the
borrower, the FAO Cooperative Programme was created in 1967 to
provide assistance to borrowers where national capacity was
inadequate. In 1984, this FAO division prepared a paper on the
Identification and preparation of irrigation projects to provide
guidance to its staff and that of consulting firms.

The document provided general guidance on the different activities
for the comparison of various options, such as: review of available
database; assessment of topography, soils and land capability;
estimates of irrigation water requirements; assessment of available
water resources; and preliminary cost-benefit analysis

The document also provided guidance for the preparation of the
engineering studies necessary for the planning of the preferred option
before the appraisal of the project. The objective was to provide the
necessary technical information to produce preliminary designs upon
which estimates of quantities and cost estimates, and ultimately the
economic analysis, could be based.

36
Remarkably, the document did not provide any specific guidance on
the technical aspects of project preparation, with the exception of the
estimates of irrigation water requirements for the proposed cropping
patterns. The document suggested specifically to use an 80-percent
probability of excess effective rainfall in the determination of project
water requirements and to convert from net to gross water
requirements on the basis of empirical local data for efficiency of the
types of irrigation systems under consideration or from the FAO
Irrigation and Drainage Paper No 24. The last revision (1992) of the
FAO document on Crop water requirements provides values of
conveyance, field canal distribution (Ed) and field application (Ea)
efficiencies based on a 1974 survey of ICID and U.S. sources with
the remark that these values are applicable to well-designed schemes
in operation for some years.

The overall project efficiencies of projects with rotational supply and
surface or sprinkler application methods, using ICID value ranges,
do not exceed 38 percent for surface application methods and 43
percent for sprinkler.
10


Table 1 Overall efficiency rates based on the ICID survey
Management
and
communication
Furrow
irrigation
Ea = 57
Basin and
level border
Ea = 58
Sprinkler

Ea = 67
Rice

Ea = 32
Adequate
Ed = 65
37 38 43 21
Sufficient
Ed = 55
31 32 37 18
Insufficient
Ed = 40
23 23 27 13


10
Using the values of field application efficiency from the U.S. Soil
Conservation, the overall efficiency rates range from 39 to 52 percent for
basin irrigation and adequate management, and from 30 to 38 percent for
sufficient management and furrow irrigation. These overall efficiency
rates are slightly above those obtained with the Ea ICID values. However,
they are lower than the ones used in feasibility studies.


37
These overall efficiencies are of the same order as the values
estimated at the impact evaluation of irrigation projects and confirm
the over-optimism of the values adopted during the planning of
irrigation projects. The FAO document, particularly its last revision,
should have called the attention of the users of these guidelines to the
importance of realistic estimates of the overall efficiency. As
indicated in Chapter 1, the gap between appraisal estimates and
actual efficiency rates can reach about 40 percent.

Why are planners and designers of irrigation projects from govern-
ment agencies and financing institutions so optimistic about the
hydraulic performance of irrigation projects during the planning
process? A participant, from a consulting firm, to a World Bank
irrigation seminar in the 1980s answered that question in blunt terms:
If we were realistic, all of us would be out of business. Low
efficiency reduces the irrigable areas and/or the cropping patterns
and affects negatively the economic viability of the project. It is very
intriguing that the over-optimism of consulting firms was neither
raised as an issue during the preparation phase of irrigation projects
with FAO/CP assistance or during the appraisal by the financing
agencies. It is acknowledged here that water lost in a surface
irrigation project can be re-used beneficially through recirculation or
further downstream. This question of project versus basin efficiency
is further discussed in Chapter 6.

The efficiencies assumed during the planning process could be
obtained if a number of conditions were met. Designs have to be not
only technically sound but also realistic when taking into
consideration social and institutional aspects and practical
considerations such as access-road conditions, night-shift work and
motivation of low-pay staff members, which affect the efficiency of
water delivery.

Updating of the 1984 FAO irrigation guidelines (1996)

The 1996 document entitled Guidelines for planning irrigation and
drainage investment projects prepared by the FAO Investment
Centre focuses on new types of thinking and approaches to the

38
planning process of irrigation as crystallized in the 1993 World Bank
policy paper Water resources management and in the findings of a
1992 Portfolio Management Task Force of the World Bank. That
task force concluded that the main problems that constrain the
performance of investment projects in various sectors are inadequate
consideration of institutional constraints and poor planning of
implementation, and a lack of commitment to the success of the
projects by the government and users. The 1996 FAO guidelines
assume that water policy reviews indicate that irrigation is a
justifiable option within the context of the overall water resource
strategy of a country. The guidelines therefore discuss issues specific
to the implementation ability of the irrigation sector:
the participation of all stakeholders in the planning and
implementation process, to create a sense of ownership and of
commitment to the project;
the creation of water user associations and the transfer of
operation and maintenance responsibility;
the possible role of NGOs in participatory development; and
the issue of fiscal sustainability, including contribution to
capital costs.

The technical deficiencies of irrigation projects and the alternative
options to improve design and operation were discussed in sundry
workshops, conferences and seminars in the 1980s and 1990s.
However, these aspects were deliberately not covered when updating
the 1984 FAO paper, because they were available in a number of
FAO, World Bank and other papers, conference proceedings and
miscellaneous publications. Most of the purely technical content of
the 1984 documents reflecting the conventional approach to project
planning was repeated where appropriate.

The only additions to the 1984 version on aspects of water
management and system operation were limited to short discussions
of the planning process and choice of technology and to the
questions to be addressed in a typical project document. The

39
complete text of the FAO guidelines on water management aspects is
reproduced in annex.
11


The section on the choice of technology is a brief reference to a long
and passionate debate within the World Bank on competing design
visions which was oversimplified in the 1994 review of the Bank
experience in irrigation by presenting a polarization of the bank
engineers into two camps.

One subgroup sees the problem largely as one of the hydraulic
instability of extensively gated, manually operated systems and sees
the solution as being the modernization of these systems with
automatic downstream control structures and feedback mechanisms
to achieve hydraulic stability. The other subgroup of design
engineers has accepted the reality of farmer damage in the wet
season and gone to the cruder and more robust structured design,
giving up the possibility of just-on-time on demand delivery of
water to crops in the hope of preserving the civil works.

The conclusion of the World Bank review was that there was
inconclusive evidence to favour one camp or the other. The
discussion on technology was closed by stating that it was beyond
the reviews scope to compare and assess the merits of the crop-
based or water-based systems. The FAO document states that the
discussion need not be continued since it is well covered elsewhere.
Alluding to the issue does not provide much guidance to the users of
the guidelines.

In summary, both the 1984 and 1996 FAO guidelines for preparation
of irrigation projects as well as the World Bank instructions are still
driven by the concern of banking institutions. The objective of the
engineering studies is to obtain a cost estimate with plus or minus
15-percent accuracy. The changes in project design to improve

11
The additions to the 1984 guidelines on water management and system
operation are nothing but the comments made by the World Bank (the
author of this paper) on a draft of the revised guidelines, with the expect-
ations that these comments would be considerably developed by FAO.

40
implementation ability through the devolution of operation and
maintenance responsibilities to the users was driven by the
recognition that the challenges of operating and maintaining the
irrigation infrastructure are often beyond the financial capacity of
public-sector institutions.

Not much progress has been made in official thinking about the
challenge of closing the gap between the expected and actual
outcome of irrigation projects, about improving service to the users,
increasing food production and preserving the environment within
the constraints of decreasing water resource allocation for irrigation.

Lending for irrigation has progressively changed over time from
project-specific investments to sector loans or national/regional
projects supporting the objectives of participation and capacity
building. These projects often are a mix of low-cost rehabilitation
endeavours and management reforms with attention to improved
operation and maintenance, and user participation. Low-cost
rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure, in some cases an
investment to catch up with years of differed maintenance, cannot
correct the deficiencies of the original design, if the causes of such
deficiencies are not identified through an in-depth diagnosis of the
current system.


IV. TECHNICAL VERSUS MANAGERIAL CHANGES

The idea that the performance of irrigation can be improved by
managerial changes was and is still widely spread within the
irrigation community. Indeed there are some examples of improved
system performance achieved through operational changes supported
by effective communication between the agency and the farmers.
One of these is the Lower Talavera irrigation system in the
Philippines. The research programme carried out by the Rice
International Research Institute (IRRI) and the National Irrigation
Agency (NIA) developed a rotational water supply schedule which
produced dramatic results. Operation of the system was simply
converted from continuous supply to a supply by turns between the

41
upper and lower sections of the lateral canals. Water efficiency and
productivity were enhanced because of reduced runoff from the
head-end areas and increased yields of tail-end farms. This change in
operation was indeed rather crude.

Much more complex was the change made in the Dantiwada project
in Gujarat, India, where the operation of the main canal system was
upgraded to near downstream control through frequent
communications between gatekeepers of cross regulators
12
. It is
important to emphasize that this change was achieved through
intensive training of the field staff: this unique case might not pass
the test of time because of the intensive management and dedication
required.

Malano correctly argues that one level of service can be provided
with several types of flow control and, conversely, one type of flow
control can be used to provide different levels of service. For
example, the same water-control technology is used in Mexico to
provide water on prearranged demand and in Thailand and the
Philippines on the basis of centralized scheduling. The provision of a
higher level of service with a given type of flow control requires
additional staffing with greater skills and proficiency for planning
and executing the system operations. However, the number of staff
members needed to operate a system under, say, manual upstream
control can be substantially reduced if the same level of service is
provided by an automatic system. In most modern irrigation projects
in Morocco, where operating on arranged demand would be feasible,
water distribution is decided by the irrigation agency, including flow
rate, duration and frequency. A local attempt by an innovative water-
master in the Doukkala project confirms, if need be, the feasibility of
operating these systems on arranged demand.

12
The 46km-long Dantiwada main canal is equipped with eight gated cross
regulators. Gatekeepers are instructed to maintain constant water levels
upstream of the cross regulators, the normal practice in upstream controlled
systems. However, they also communicate with the staff of the upstream
cross regulator to modify the incoming flow up to the diversion point, as in
a downstream-controlled system.

42
The trade-off between flow control technology and management has
implications on the operational efficiency of the system. It is easy to
supply water on demand with a manually operated upstream-
controlled system by continuously operating the system largely in
excess of the actual demand. Such an operation results in significant
wastage of water when demand is low, for instance at night. Thus,
the Grand Valley water user association in Colorado provides water
on demand with upstream control. The district operates the canals at
high flow rate. However, there is a large percentage of spillback to
the river. The Seyhan project in Turkey, with abundant water
resources, is operated with minimum adjustments for limited demand
at night. This mode of operation is known in Pakistan as operation by
refusal.

There are unfortunately many unsuccessful examples of schemes
throughout Asia where operational changes attempted with the
support of research programmes have failed (for example, the
introduction of a rigid water distribution pattern in the Nong Wai
project in Thailand). The question is whether the practices introduced
through pilot projects will continue once these projects end. The
more equitable new water-saving distribution strategy is often
discontinued because big landowners at the head of the systems
exercise their political power to restore their privileges or because
the farmers downstream are not consulted.

Focus on managerial changes was the basis of the Bank-supported
National Water Management project in India in the mid 1980s. The
most important element was the preparation of an operational plan.
On the basis of water availability, system characteristics and
agricultural options, the plan was expected to define how the system
would be operated with respect to the timing and quantity of water
deliveries. Only low-cost improvements to the infrastructure needed
to support the improved operational plan were supported by the
project. The results fell short of appraisal estimates. The completion
report concluded that projects of this type which not only involve
technical changes but also have significant social aspects require a
high level of farmer participation in irrigation management to be
successful. It also stated that introduction of such concepts will

43
require in turn the use of more advanced technologies in irrigation
management, which are currently available in India and abroad.

In the same way, examples abound where technological changes
alone have not yielded the expected benefits because of a lack of
training capabilities during design, construction and operation of the
scheme. One such example is the Sidorejo project in Indonesia (Box
3), which was implemented without the full commitment of the
irrigation agency.

Box 3: The Sidorejo irrigation project in Indonesia

In the mid 1980s, the Indonesia irrigation agency (DGWRD) selected the
Sidorejo irrigation project, a subsystem of the Kedung-Ombo multipurpose
project, to test modern canal control techniques and determine whether
they were applicable to other irrigation systems in Indonesia. The 13km-
long main canal was designed for downstream control and the secondary
canals for upstream control, with the use of automatic float-operated
gates for the entire system. The concept was similar to the one used in
some projects in North Africa. However, it differed in the control
structures for the distribution system, by using small-size float-operated
gates, which could be easily tampered with, instead of the more robust
static structures such as the diagonal or long-crested weirs used in North
Africa.

This modern pilot project has not been successful for a number of reasons.
The quality of construction was poor. Several sections of the lined main
canals failed, so that the main canal could not be operated under
downstream control. Installation of hydro-mechanical equipment was
faulty. Precise vertical settings were needed. The agency was not really
aware of the need for high standards of construction for modern-design
systems. Local operation and maintenance personnel were not trained for
the operation of a system unknown in Indonesia and they went on using
national standards.

Sustainable improved performance in irrigation is obtained when
combining physical, managerial and institutional changes. The case
of the State of Victoria in Australia where the reform process
combined all these changes is described in Box 4.

.


44
Box 4. The technical and political reform process in the State of
Victoria, Australia

Irrigation enterprises with low profitability, aging infrastructure, large
public debt, and environmental degradation through salinity and water-
logging were the situation in the State of Victoria, Australia, in the 1980s.
Operation of the complex irrigation channel systems was inflexible and
highly reactive. Operation of the irrigation systems was driven from the
head works down. Renewing infrastructure provided the opportunity to
redesign the system to create much more effective water-delivery
systems. The first step taken was to fundamentally change the approach to
managing the irrigation systems with the objectives of reducing the costs
of delivering services and of building a base with new technology to allow
more sophisticated water services and tariff arrangements. Instead of
replacing the infrastructure as it existed, careful analysis of the system
revealed opportunities to create better, more effective irrigation systems.
The roster system requiring the irrigators to take water on a fixed schedule
was converted into a water-on-order system allowing the farmers to better
meet the needs of their crops, make more efficient use of water and
reduce pumping costs. A telemetry system combined with SCADA provided
real operations of flows and water levels.

The new system was a significant step in the development of irrigation in
Victoria. It allowed leasing of water rights, diversion licenses, and sale
entitlements between farmers with certain conditions. The shortfall of
revenues was considerably reduced. (Langford)

The Office du Niger in Mali, which was often referred to as an
example of a fiscally burdened organization, is now a success story
for Africa and other regions (Box 5). In both cases, the restructuring
of the agencies was combined with a modernization plan of the
scheme to improve the flexibility and reliability of water delivery

There is a need to revise the strategy for irrigated agriculture and to
address the poor management practices of the large canal irrigation
systems through a rethinking of irrigation policy, formulation and
technical design of projects, as illustrated by the two successful
examples.




45
Box 5: Restructuring of the Office du Niger, Mali, West Africa

The Office du Niger in Mali was known for many years as an example of an
irrigation system with a heavy financial burden. It is now seen as a success
story. The Office du Niger was created in the early 1930s to reduce the
dependence of France on cotton imported from the British colonies. The
project was managed by a parastatal organization, following the model of
the Gezira project in Sudan. The 25 000 resettled farmers were seen as
agricultural workers. In the 1950s cultivation of cotton was abandoned
because of rapid development of water-logging conditions, a major
contrast with the heavy soils of the Gezira project, which are highly
suitable for cotton cultivation. The restructuring of the Office du Niger
focused on both institutional and technical aspects. The paddy processing
and commercialization functions of the Office du Niger were progressively
privatized. The activities of the Office are now concentrated around its
essential functions of water services, planning and maintenance.

The physical upgrading consists in modern water control of the main
conveyance and distribution network and precise levelling of paddy lands.
The improved water delivery and land levelling make the adoption of
transplanting and highyield varieties possible, with an increase of paddy
yields of 1.5 to 6 tons per hectare.

The technical and institutional restructuring of the Office du Niger makes
it possible for the agronomic and economic performances of the project to
skyrocket, responding to the need for financial balance and to market
opportunities in a context of liberalization and privatization. (Couture)


V. TECHNOLOGY VERSUS INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS:
USER PARTICIPATION

From social to business associations

By the mid 1970s some irrigation researchers from non-
governmental organizations, such as the Ford Foundation, and others
argued that sustainable irrigation systems required the active
participation of the users. By the 1980s several countries started to
implement irrigation management transfer programmes whereby
irrigators were encouraged to participate in operation and main-
tenance. Some of these programmes consisted in the creation of pilot
user associations spread over a number of irrigation schemes to test

46
the feasibility of involving the farmers in operation and maintenance
activities (Maharashtra State in India). Other programmes consisted
in a large-scale transfer of the lower level, such as in Pakistan, the
Philippines or Indonesia. In Pakistan, over 17 000 associations have
been created at the watercourse level, but very few are still active
after completion of the lining programme
13
. In 1987, the Indonesian
government decided that all irrigation systems of less than 500
hectares would be transferred to water user associations by the year
2003, with priority given to the systems of less than 150 hectares.
The objective of these countrywide programmes was to involve the
farmers directly in maintenance activities of the lower level of the
irrigation systems, and in some cases to assist the government
agencies in collecting irrigation service fees. Management transfer
involved only a partial devolution of responsibilities. The
government retained some control over operation and maintenance
plans and continued to contribute to the financing of operation and
maintenance activities. The number of farmers and the areas covered
by each association (from 200 to 500 hectares) were usually small.

The approach to irrigation management transfer took a different
orientation in the late 1980s with the implementation of the transfer
programme in Mexico. In the first phase, the user associations in that
country took over the financial and managerial responsibilities for
operating the systems below the main canals. In the second phase of
the process, still ongoing, the responsibilities of operation and
maintenance of the main systems have been handed over to limited-
responsibility societies. The average size of the 406 associations
created in Mexico by the end of 1999 was about 7 000 hectares, with
some reaching 30 000 hectares. The same approach was later
successfully adopted in Turkey, where the irrigation agency
transferred the management of about 1.6 million hectares
14
. This leap

13
A new programme involving reforms of provincial irrigation departments,
creation of area water boards at command level and farmers organizations
at distributary or minor canal level is now under implementation in Pakistan
with the joint support of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
14
About 1.1 million hectares was transferred during a three-year accelerated
programme between 1994 and 1996. The average size of the 222

47
in scale and rate of transfer has stimulated some other countries to
shift to accelerated programmes, for example the State of Andhra
Pradesh in India, which created over 10 000 associations in July-
August 1997.

A key difference exists between the approach adopted in the 1970s-
1980s, mostly in Asian countries, and the one developed in Mexico
and Turkey. In these two countries, the programmes aimed to involve
farmers in representative governance and not to maximize direct user
farmer participation in operation and maintenance. The associations
created in these two countries have similar designs, responsibilities
and functions to those of the existing associations in the United
States, Spain and some Latin America countries such as Chile, Peru
and Colombia. The Asian and Mexican models are sometimes
referred to as social and business associations respectively
(Facon). The creation of social water user associations has tended to
follow a gradual approach experimenting with pilot associations.

The business-prone associations are responsible for water
distribution, fee collection, maintenance, conflict resolution, and
representation of farmers with discussions with public agencies. To
fulfil these functions, these associations are legal entities that can
enter into contracts. They have the power to enforce rules and
regulations. The farmers are not directly involved in the management
of their systems. These associations hire professional staff for the
actual management. The members of these associations through their
elected boards define the rules and regulations to be followed by the
hired employees.

The social associations are seldom self-sustaining. The concept of
business-type associations is rejected by the irrigation bureaucratic
establishment or not applicable because of the perceived incapacity
of farmers to manage large systems. A multi-tiered organization is
now emerging as a possible solution for the management of large-
scale irrigation schemes with a large number of small farmers. This

associations, created as of the end of December 1997, was 5 300 hectares,
but some were exceeding 20 000 hectares.

48
model consisting in multi-level organizations is consistent with the
definition of modern irrigation. A modern irrigation system consists
of several subsystems or levels with clearly defined interfaces where
water is controlled and measured. The strict application of that model
with a formal independent organization at each level could result in
an excessive number of layers of management and formal farmer
organizations. For example, the proposed organizational structure of
the Mahakali project in Western Nepal would include a central
coordinating committee at the project level, eight coordinating
committees at area level, forty user associations at the block level,
1405 tertiary committees and nearly 10 000 water user groups at the
outlet level. It would be not only time consuming but even
counterproductive to organize so many associations and groups at
each level.

In practice, some levels of management can be combined within one
organization, while maintaining the modern concept of service from
the higher to the lower level. In addition, the responsibilities
transferred to each user organization could be either governance or
management functions, or a combination of the two. For example,
the higher-level user organizations could be involved in major
decision processes, such as rules and regulations, the annual
maintenance work programme, revision of the water charge
structure, the annual budget and the timing of the irrigation season,
the day-to-day management of the main system being the
responsibility of an irrigation agency or company. Operation and
maintenance of the two middle levels of a system could be
transferred to water user organizations. This model can be applied in
a pragmatic way depending on the size of the scheme and
configuration of the irrigation system, the capability of the farmers
and the willingness of the irrigation agencies to accept fundamental
changes in their roles.




49

Figure 1 A multi-tiered user organization/agency of a surface
irrigation scheme
Note: Each user organization may have either governance and management
functions or both

Impact of irrigation management transfer over performance of
irrigation projects

A number of specialists thought that taking irrigation and drainage
system management out of the direct governmental sphere would
inevitably lead to improvements in the sustainability of irrigation and
drainage systems and in agricultural production. The philosophy was
that users were more likely to operate systems effectively and
according to their requirements and also pay for the operation if they
were also the owners. The dominant perception was that public
irrigation management organizations lacked the incentives and
responsiveness to enhance performance whereas water users had a
direct interest in cost efficiency, profitability and proper physical
condition of the irrigation facilities.

However, despite the widespread adoption of management transfer
programmes, there is still little information about their impact on the
agricultural performance of irrigation systems. A review of PIM
impact studies in 1997 noted that the impact is typically not

50
noticeable in terms of agricultural performance. In Sri Lanka there
has been no detectable change in irrigated area, crop patterns,
cropping intensity or yields. PIM has neither improved nor interfered
with agricultural productivity (Vermillion).

Another review of experiences in irrigation management transfer in
selected countries in Asia revealed that the main impact has been a
gradual decline in government financing of the operation and
maintenance of irrigation systems, whereas water user groups are
making a modest contribution towards maintenance. The analysis
also shows that there has been a modest improvement in the
irrigation service following transfer. The review concludes: the
evidence of the impact of IMT on systems operations is not
conclusive but seems to suggest that it has not resulted in a
deterioration of systems operations nor in a decline in agricultural
performance (Samad).

The general impression of an international workshop in Cali,
Colombia, in 1996 organized to examine the impact of irrigation
management transfer (IMT) in selected countries was that after
turnover, services were substantially improved in terms of timeliness,
reliability and equity in four countries (Mexico, Turkey, Colombia
and Taiwan). By contrast, the social water user associations that were
developed for the purpose of providing cheap labour for maintenance
and collecting water fees were consistently found weak or paper
associations. The business-type water user associations that hired
staff to distribute water and ran the distribution system similar to a
business operation were often very strong.

Two papers on Mexico irrigation presented at the ICID Congress in
Granada, Spain, in 1997 illustrate the inconclusive evidence of the
impact of irrigation management transfer on the performance of
irrigation projects. Johnson noted that the water user associations
have proven capable of managing irrigation systems and in the
process have reduced annual government subsidies for irrigation
water by more than US$200 million. Maintenance activities by the
user associations have stopped the deterioration of the infrastructure.

51
However, Johnson concluded on a pessimistic projection by stating
that In Mexico with relatively good irrigation under the irrigation
agency, it is unlikely that IMT alone would result in dramatic
increases in production. A second paper presented by specialists
from the Mexican irrigation agency noted that the agricultural
productivity of 38 irrigation districts transferred in 1994 had
dramatically increased. The average crop yield increased by 39
percent from 7.9 to 11 ton/ha and the water productivity by 62
percent from 750 to 1220 kg/1000 m
3
between 1989 and 1996.
Wheat yield increased by 41 percent after the transfer. This paper,
however, noted that this increase was the result of the transfer
programme and two complementary programmes: a rehabilitation,
modernization and on-farm improvement programme coupled with
the modernization and improved techniques of on-farm irrigation.

Some projects claim a substantial increase in cropping intensity and
crop yields, but these projects were performing at a very low level
before the transfer. The transfer of management to user associations
may have contributed to reducing the chaos in water distribution and
the level of inequity between head- and tail-enders. The impact is
less evident in projects that were previously managed by irrigation
agencies according to well-established rules. These agencies have
transferred their practices to the associations. For example, the user
associations have adopted the mode of water delivery on pre-
arranged demand used in most Latin American countries after
transfer. Some improvement in the service provided, such as
reducing the time lag between demand and actual delivery could be
made through technological changes such as an improved communi-
cations system, computers and operational procedures.

In conclusion of this chapter on user participation, this paper argues
that:
Simply rearranging the deck chairs is not likely to achieve
significant improvements in irrigated agricultural productivity
and will not meet the broader objectives of integrated water
resource management (Malano);

52
Small and social associations or water groups responsible for
operation and maintenance at the tertiary level have little
potential for improvement;
Most institutional improvements cannot be fully implemented
without the right physical environment;
Physical and institutional improvements in irrigation are not
isolated actions but are self-supportive;
Any strategy for improving performance of the irrigation
sector should consider the relationship between the design of
user associations and their functions and the strategy for a
higher level of service.

The rapid devolution of management to business-minded associ-
ations adopted by some countries is likely to be a better strategy than
the formation of social associations. However, it requires a high level
of commitment by the political authorities and the government
agencies and by the farmers, a massive mobilization effort by the
government to convince the farmers to take over and to organize the
associations and a massive training programme in a number of water
management, accounting and operational issues. This does not imply
that formation of small groups of users is a bad strategy. These small
groups are needed to organize water distribution at the lowest level
in irrigated areas where small farms dominate. However, if these
water groups are nested in a multi-tiered organization up to the main
system or project level, they can participate in important decisions on
activities affecting their lives. This is the basis of the emerging new
concept where new concepts of user participation and modernization
of the systems are converging.


VI. IMPROVED IRRIGATION IN THE CONTEXT OF
WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

In recent years there has been a growing interest, particularly among
IWMI researchers, in improving the understanding of the concepts of
efficiency, water loss and agricultural water use. Although only a
part of the water diverted to an irrigation system is effectively used

53
by the crops, typically less than 50 percent, the remaining water
either drains to the river system or seeps into the ground. In both
cases it can be used downstream for another purpose or pumped for
irrigation, very much increasing the overall efficiency at the project
and at the basin levels. Drainage water that flows back into a stream
or to subsurface areas is not lost or wasted in physical terms. The
distinction between field efficiency, project efficiency and river
basin efficiency is very important. Improving irrigation efficiency to
increase cropping intensity or expand irrigable land might deprive
another irrigation system or another use downstream, such as
navigation, water supply or environmental flows to control marine
intrusion in deltaic areas. These issues have led to an ongoing
discussion on whether efficiency improvements can produce any
water that can be reallocated to other users. For example, some
California planners dismiss the potential for water use efficiency
improvements in that state because, they argue, such improvements
will not produce much real water.

This discussion should however not be an excuse for not improving
irrigation systems.

The main cause of water-logging and salinization, requiring
expensive drainage works, is excessive irrigation. Improving water
application can substantially reduce the hazard of salinization as well
as the cost of drainage. Increasing irrigation efficiency can have a
significant effect in reducing the load of salts that must be removed
from the soil annually (Hillel). Drainage water gets polluted by
removing salts from the soil, as well as by fertilizers and pesticides.

Inefficiency at irrigation-project level increases pumping costs in
projects that depend on lift from a river, such as many projects in
Romania pumping from the Danube River or the very large Kashi
project in Uzbekistan.

Inefficiency makes uneconomic a number of investments in
irrigation because it reduces the areas that can be irrigated and the
expected benefits. Inefficiency also depresses crop yields,
particularly in the tail end of irrigation projects, because of changes

54
in irrigation scheduling such as increased intervals of irrigation, to
compensate for the rapid depletion of water resources.

Inefficiency increases non-beneficial losses by increasing
evaporation and transpiration from soil and free water surfaces. This
is the case, for example, in the Tarim basin in China where
inefficient irrigation has caused large waterlogged and saline areas
surrounding the lower areas of surface irrigation projects. It has been
claimed that the overall efficiency of the Nile system in Egypt may
be as high as 90 percent, counting part of the water flows released to
the sea as requirements for environmental purposes. However, it is
not known how much water is lost through unproductive evaporation
from fallow and wet lands throughout the valley and the delta.

Efficiency improvements also produce other benefits, including
improvements in human health, more reliable in-stream flows,
ecosystem and habitat restoration, reductions in the cost of treating
drinking water, less environmental contamination by agricultural
chemicals, and reductions in the economic cost of multiple
unnecessary withdrawals of water (Gleick).

It would be a mistake to leave the impression that improving the
efficiency of irrigation systems is not an issue because the lost water
can be re-circulated or used further downstream. It would also be
incorrect to suggest that the highest efficiency should be obtained in
all circumstances, especially where there is a high potential for
groundwater reuse.











55
PART II: CHANGING APPROACHES TO THE
DESIGN OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS
The time for grand vision and flowery rhetoric has
passed. The challenges ahead require sharper
focus, real commitment, and concrete action.
VII. IRRIGATION DESIGN CONCEPTS IN SELECTED
COUNTRIES
This chapter presents the salient features of the design, management
and performance of irrigation systems in key countries. Obviously it
is not an exhaustive presentation. The objective is to highlight the
large differences regarding designs and management of systems
caused by the climatic differences and the economic, political and
social relations in the different countries. The second part of the
chapter discusses the problems with the transfer of technology from
one region to another one with different social environment.
A. Traditional irrigation systems
Traditional irrigation is rooted far back in history. Although
traditional irrigation schemes now represent a small percentage of
the 265 million hectares under irrigation worldwide, they still play an
important role in most developing countries such as Nepal,
Indonesia, Morocco, Peru or the Philippines. Century-old schemes in
Spain have been the models for the development of irrigation in the
New World and have attracted the attention of engineers from
colonial powers in the 19
th
century at the onset of irrigation develop-
ment in the Indus basin and elsewhere. Traditional schemes are
relatively small in scale, from a few tens to a few hundreds of
hectares. However, some traditional schemes reach a few thousand
hectares, such as the Maujis Chautra project (10 000 ha) in Nepal
and the Khanabad project covering more than 30 000 ha in
Afghanistan. These schemes have been built and maintained by local
communities with little or no government support. Local customs

56
regarding water allocation and distribution in these systems have
evolved over time and are well adapted to local and ecological
conditions. Although the term local customs may be interpreted as
the opposite of scientific, the rules of water distribution can in fact be
very sophisticated. Their complexity increases with the degree of
water scarcity. By contrast, the infrastructure for water allocation is
rather simple and all the users can understand their operation. The
most frequently found water control structure in traditional irrigation
is the flow divider to allocate water proportionally to fixed water
allocation ratios related either to water rights or to the irrigated areas.
The most famous traditional irrigation scheme is the 16 000 ha
Valencia project in Spain, known for its oldest water tribunal.
Complex operational procedures of this project prescribe different
rules for three levels of water availability.

The cohesion and social bounds among members of local
communities are the main reasons for the success and sustainability
of traditional schemes which have been under existence for hundred
of years. These social bounds do not usually exist in rural areas
where settlers of various ethnic groups move shortly after the
development of irrigation systems. Extending the finding of social
research studies on traditional irrigation systems to the large-scale
systems built in the last decades should be done with great caution.
Self-enforcement of the rules is much weaker in these projects. For
example, stealing water from the distribution canals in the Indus
basin is common practice since water is perceived by the farmers as
belonging to the government. By contrast, rules are strictly enforced
once the water is diverted to the lower level managed by the users.


B. Country experience

1. INDIA

The large irrigation systems built in northern India in the 1800s were
designed for drought protection to avoid famine. The objective was
to distribute irrigation water to the maximum number of farmers. The
design capacity of canals was as low as 0.25 litre/second/hectare or

57
three times less than the irrigation requirements of intensive
irrigation.

Agro-climatic and socioeconomic conditions in India vary widely
depending on geographic location, and irrigation systems have
evolved reflecting this diversity.

There are several models of distribution of water below field outlets
in surface irrigation systems: i) the warabundi system of Northwest
India (Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh), ii) the shejpali
and block systems (Maharashtra and Gujarat) and iii) the localized
system used in the southern states.

Under the warabundi system the available water is allocated to all
farmers within a block, irrespective of their crops and location of
their holdings, under a rigid weekly scheduling. The share of water is
proportional to the holding area in the outlet command and allocated
in terms of time interval as a fraction of the total hours of the week.
Advocates of warabundi claim that this system is highly equitable.
This would be right if the seepage losses in the field channels of the
block were negligible. Seepage losses of unlined channels may
represent 40 percent of the diverted flows.

Under the shejpali system, the government enters into some sort of
agreement with the farmers for supplying water to them. The farmers
file applications and the government issues permits for the supply of
water and the two constitute the agreement. The water is distributed
according to a predetermined date in each rotation. A preliminary
programme is drawn every year depending on the availability of
water. Farmers submit applications for supply of water indicating the
crops they wish to grow and the areas under them. Water is then
apportioned on the basis of the crops and the overall demand. A
schedule fixing the turns of supplying farmers in the sanctioned areas
is prepared for each rotation. The irrigation interval depends on the
rate of water consumption by the crops. The schedule is notified in
advance and every farmer of the command area has prior information
about his turn of supply. The system is called rigid shejpali if the
duration of supplying water in the various fields along with the date

58
is also recorded on the permits issued to the farmers for sanctioned
areas. Application of the shejpali system is based on a high intensity
of adjustable gates and their frequent resetting. The objective of
matching supply with demand is rarely met because of the difficulty
of operating manually adjustable gates.

Under the block system, a long-term arrangement for supply of water
is done particularly for perennial crops, but irrigation from season to
season proceeds through shejpali. The blocks are sanctioned for six
to twelve years. (Mandavia)

The advantages and disadvantages of the different designs used in
India have been the subject of several research studies, which led to
intense debate. There is, however, wide recognition that, overall, the
performance of surface irrigation in India needs considerable
improvement. Bhavanishankar states: The reliability and predict-
ability of water supplies is not assured in most of the schemes.
Conflicts are common in most of the systems, leading to vandalism
and disruption of the physical facilities and degradation of the
system. The present method of delivering the water as per the
demand of the powerful group among the farmers is often arbitrary
and wasteful with considerable inequity in distribution.

The unreliability and/or rigidity of water distribution from the
surface irrigation systems in India as well as the under-sizing of the
canals to deliver water for intensive irrigation have contributed to the
uncontrolled development of groundwater during the last decades.

2. PAKISTAN

Of the 16.2 million hectares irrigated in Pakistan in the early 1990s,
about 93 percent are under the command of the Indus River
Irrigation System. This system, the largest in the world, encompasses
three storage reservoirs, 19 barrages or head works, 12 link canals,
43 command areas and 107 000 watercourses, each one serving an
area of about 250 to 700 acres. Water to the watercourse is diverted
from the distributary and minor canals through ungated structures
known as mogha. The design is similar to the one used in northwest

59
India. With the exception of the link and main canals, the system was
designed to operate at or near full supply. The mogha is designed to
allow for a constant discharge. Within the watercourse command,
farmers receive water proportionally to their landholding. The entire
discharge to the watercourse is given to one farmer for a specified
period on a seven-day rotation.

The canal system was designed as a run-of-the-river project to
maximize the cropped area, with minimum water consumption, and
simple operation and administration. Canals were intended to
provide equitable distribution, with no interference by the canal
establishment
15
.

Extensive performance studies by IWMI and others have
demonstrated that water distribution, contrary to the stated
objectives, is not equitable. The greatest inequity is between
watercourses. Some head mogha draw two or three times their
allocated shares while tail mogha may only receive half or less. The
main causes of inequity are the opposition of the farmers to the
abolition of the privileged water allocations granted during the
colonial period, the tampering of the mogha structures and
installation of illegal outlets, as well as changes in water profile due
to siltation
16
and lack of maintenance. The overall efficiency of canal

15
Field reality differs considerably from this idealistic equity objective.
Abundant literature has documented the policy of the colonial state which
tended to allocate privileged and customary rights to local elites as
compensation for governing their local communities in line with the
interests of the colonial state or other services rendered. After
Independence, the strict application of an equitable and proportional water
allocation was strongly opposed by both the civil authorities and the farmers
when the irrigation departments tried to formalize an equitable policy. For
example, water allowances at the distributary canal head of the Lower
Chenab Command range from .19 to .32 l/s/ha with an average of .24 l/s/ha.
Water allowances at the outlets within the same command range from .13 to
.84 l/s/ha.

16
As a result of lack of maintenance (weed and silt cleaning), the higher
water levels in the upper reaches of the systems cause higher than foreseen

60
systems serving individual command areas is below 40 percent.
Losses contribute to groundwater recharge.

Groundwater use has been a main factor in the intensification of
irrigated agriculture in Pakistan during the last two decades.
Groundwater not only supplies additional water but provides the
flexibility to match water supplies with the crop demands. The
originally expected cropping intensity has increased on average from
120 to over 160 percent in some areas of Punjab. The
overexploitation of groundwater is discussed in Chapter 9.

Irrigation systems were initially developed without provision for
drainage. Irrigation without drainage in an environment like the
Indus basin inevitably leads to the rising of water tables and salinity.
About 30 percent of the Indus command area is currently
waterlogged and about 14 percent severely or moderately salt-
affected. (World Bank 1994)

The basic design concept in northwest India and in the Indus basin
was to provide equitable distribution of water with minimum
interference and low-cost operation by limited staff and means of
communication. Distributary and minor canals were operated in
on/off rotation from continuously running main systems. Ungated
outlets discharge water from these canals into the watercourses from
where farmers get their water shares under the warabundi system.
This system was expected to be effective and equitable but it was not
related to crop water requirements. It is up to the farmers to arrange
their cropping pattern and watering to suit the delivery of water at a
fixed flow and predetermined time. For the reasons given above,
there is great inequity in actual withdrawals between head and tail
watercourses.

Groundwater development has obviously contributed to the
reliability and flexibility of water allocation in the Indus basin. A
valid question is whether the development of groundwater has

discharges through the outlets in these reaches, resulting in less water being
available downstream.

61
improved the equity of distribution. Few research studies have been
made on the performance of conjunctive use of water in the Indus
basin. It is assumed that the equity between the mid and upper
sections of command areas has improved. However inequity may
have increased for the lower sections because of the poor quality of
groundwater and the lower density of wells.

Box 6: By refusal water control strategy application in Pakistan

The Lower Swat Canal in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan was
modernized in the 1980s to meet future crop and salt leaching
requirements. The modernization objectives consisted in the rising of the
water delivery capacity from .36 to .78 l/s/ha (and up to 1.34 l/s/ha to
provide operational flexibility) and the provision of facilities to gradually
transform the operation into a modern demand-based irrigation
scheduling. The canals are run at full supply, except in February when
river discharge is low, and in December, when there is hardly any need for
water. The majority of the watercourses can now get nearly three times as
much water as was used before modernization. The pre-project situation
of a water-scarce system has been converted into a near ideal agricultural
system in which a farmer can grow anything he wants and water has
become abundant to the extent that night irrigation can be abandoned for
months every year. Since the drainage water effluent returns to the Kabul
River and ultimately is available for use in the Indus system in Punjab and
Sindh provinces, the irrigation department considers this is as no problem
at all. (Communication of van Hanselma)

The same strategy is now adopted for the Chasma Right Bank Canal
(CRBC), construction of which started in the late 1970s and is not yet
completed. The CRBC design reflects much of the old design tradition in
terms of control structures. In 1989, IWMI was contracted to help define a
flexible management approach for irrigation operations responding to crop
requirements (the so-called crop-based irrigation operation). Despite
intensive research on simulation of the hydraulic conditions of the main
canal, the study failed to define and implement any practical operational
procedures, given the difficulty and frequency of gate settings. The actual
operation and water delivery reflects the practices found in the Lower
Swat Canal system. Farmers manage their irrigation on personal
agreements. They frequently refuse water by partially or fully closing their
outlets. The refused water drains to the Indus River flowing at a short
distance from the main canal.


62
Use of untreated wastewater is a usual practice around most cities in
Pakistan and many other countries. Wastewater is valued by the
farmers not only because of its nutrient content, but also for its
reliability of supply, which makes cultivation of vegetables, the most
common crop in Punjab, possible.

Adoption of modern design approaches was attempted in the North-
West Frontier Province, Pakistan, which benefits from relatively
abundant water resources. The higher capacity of the canals, without
enough consideration of variable flow conditions and risk of
siltation, has resulted in the adoption of a control by refusal. This
ad-hoc strategy consists in operating the main and secondary canals
at or near full supply and letting the farmers and operators release the
excess water directly from the canals to the drainage systems.

3. EGYPT: the Nile Valley system

Irrigation was practised throughout the Nile Valley from the earliest
times. Until the mid 19
th
century, this was realized by natural
inundation from flood waters. The system has been converted from
flood to perennial irrigation following the construction of the Aswan
dam and delta barrages. Of the 3.3 million hectares irrigated in
Egypt, nearly 95 percent are supplied from the Nile irrigation system.
Barrages on the Nile divert water to the main canals. Main canals
supply branch and sub-branch canals, which provide water to private
farm watercourses, called meskas. Flows released in the main canals
are based on crop water requirements and expected distribution and
farm losses. The branch canals are operated on rotation based on the
requirements of the dominant crop. During a typical 12-day rotation,
branch canals receive water during 4 days and are off during 8 days.
A unique feature of the Nile system is that most branch canals and
meskas are below ground level. Farmers used to lift water from the
meskas through animal-driven pumps. Irrigation was mostly
practised during daytime. The relatively low flow of individual
pumps ensured a high level of equity of water allocation between
head- and tail-enders and avoided over-watering of the cultivated
lands, by contrast with gravity systems. The situation changed
dramatically with rapid replacement of traditional pumps by

63
individually owned diesel pumps or electric pumps since the 1970s,
creating large inequities of water extraction along meskas and social
inequities between tail- and head-enders. Tail farmers responded by
looking for other sources of water, mainly by pumping from the
drain system. The Nile system is similar in its architecture and
operation by rotation to the Indus system. However it differs in four
key aspects:
the releases from the Nile to the canal system are based on
irrigation requirements;
the watercourses are below ground level, forcing the farmers
to pump;
the farmers are free to irrigate at any time when their branch
canal is on; and
the design capacity of the canals is about three times higher.

The Ministry of Irrigation is now implementing a modernization
irrigation project to reduce the inequity and the re-use of poor-quality
water in the Nile delta following the adoption of diesel pumps. The
objective of the modernization is to create night storage in the
secondary canals and to replace individual lift pumps by a common
lift pump serving a raised meska. This plan is based on the adoption
of a rotational distribution of water by the farmers organized for this
purpose in water associations at the meska-pump level. This is a
unique case of modernization in which farmers have to accept the
conversion from a free-demand (when their canals are on) to a
rotational system requiring coordination and discipline.

4. SUDAN: the Gezira project

The Gezira project lies between the Blue and White Nile rivers south
of Khartoum. The Sennar diversion dam built in 1925 and the
multipurpose Roseires dam completed in 1966 regulate the flow of
the Blue Nile. The Gezira scheme was designed in the 1920s after
prolonged experiments had been carried out at pilot scale. It was
designed with the main objective of producing cotton, a single cash
crop. Other crops are grown to provide food for the farmers and to
help in the maintenance of soil fertility. Cotton, wheat, groundnut

64
and sorghum are now cultivated in a four-crop rotation including
fallow. The farmers do not own the land. The scheme is divided
between 102 000 tenants with an average of about 8 hectares.

The irrigation system was laid out to suit the size of tenancy and crop
rotation. The flat and featureless topography was favourable to the
adoption of a regular gridiron layout. The basic unit is a group of
four adjacent fields of 90 feddans. One crop is grown on each strip
following the four-crop rotation system. Each block is divided into
18 tenant fields of 2.2 hectares each.

The irrigation system comprises twin main canals running from head
works at the Sennar dam with a combined capacity of 354 m
3
/s, a
network of 2 300 kilometres of branch and main canals, and about
1 500 minor canals with a total length of over 8 000 kilometres. All
canals are divided into reaches by cross regulators which are the
control points for the off-taking canals.

The minor, branch and main canals are designed as regime
conveyance channels. The minor canals are also designed for storing
water flowing continuously from the main canals at night.

Operation of the scheme is centrally controlled: the management is
divided between the Ministry of Irrigation (MOI), which is
responsible for the irrigation network, and the Sudan Gezira Board
(SGB), which is responsible for agricultural operation and for
determining the irrigation water requirements. The water orders (or
indents) are passed to the MOI engineers, summed out throughout
the system up to the head works at the Sennar dam.

Water flows from the main to the minor canals are controlled by
movable weirs, which provide accurate and easy water measure-
ments, but have the serious disadvantage to be highly sensitive to
upstream variations of water level.

The Gezira scheme is not a sophisticated one by present-day
standards. It was designed before the development of modern
technologies of canal water control. The design, however, took the

65
best advantage of some favourable and unique features of Gezira: the
flat topography and the adopted tenancy system, i.e. the absence of
constraints imposed by small, fragmented, field plots found in many
developing countries. The adoption of the night storage system
resolved the issue of night irrigation found in many schemes. It
provides a remarkable solution to the complex problem of adjusting
water releases at the head works and at critical points of the system
to the demand without excessive losses. A negative characteristic of
the minor canals, which was probably overlooked, is their ability to
trap the silt released into the system.

For about forty years, the Gezira scheme was operated satisfactorily
on the basis of the original design and operational concept. The
management of the Gezira scheme ran into problems in the early
1970s shortly after the scheme reached its present extension. The
steady deterioration of trade in Sudan led to shortages of financial
resources. Funds became insufficient to finance the high recurrent
operation and maintenance costs and to replace machinery and
equipment. For lack of financial resources, MOI was not able to cope
with the removal of silt and clearance of weed. The situation was
worsened by the breakdown of the telephone system, which was a
vital tool for communication between SGB and MOI for the water
indent process. All these factors resulted in inadequate use of the
system. The degree of siltation in some minor canals is such that
precious little water reaches the tail blocks and some areas are out of
production. The tenants lost confidence in the untimely operation of
the system and, to some extent, took over the management of the
minor canals. The original night storage system gave way to
continuous irrigation water delivery to the fields. By adopting
unattended continuous irrigation, the tenants have reduced irrigation
labour costs. They also appreciate the flexibility of the new de-facto
on-demand system since they took control of the opening of the field
outlets. The departure from the originally planned method of
irrigation has given rise to a new management and water application.
The intention of MOI is to re-establish the night storage system,
which was based on a strict discipline of water scheduling. An
informal management offset the decline in the performance of the
official system. However, the unique design of the system played a

66
major role in maintaining irrigation service in the 1980s and in the
adoption of a new informal management system. The minor canals
playing the role of terminal reservoirs are the key features of that
transformation. It is now demonstrated that water delivery in the
Gezira scheme can be based on either rigid or highly flexible
scheduling, as long as the indenting ensures adequate refilling of the
minor canals. In other words, the design was able to adjust to a major
departure from the original management thanks to the flexibility in
operation provided by the design of the minor canals. The main
drawbacks of this unique feature are its silt-trapping efficiency and
high health hazards during manual weed clearance.

The suggestion made by a foreign consultant to narrow the minor
canals to reduce weed and silt clearance would not totally solve the
problem of siltation and weed infestation, although it would
eliminate the buffer storage in the minor canals, a critical feature of
the design of the Gezira scheme. It would also considerably increase
the complexity of operation.

5. CHINA

China has very detailed standards and regulations for the design of
large water structures. Typical structures are found in most
provinces. Irrigation projects belong to the category of manually
operated gated systems. Some gates built in concrete in the 1960s are
very difficult to handle. Many systems in China are operated during
periods of about 20 days each totalling about 80-100 days per year,
generally at or close to full supply. Water is released after a long
consultation between the local authorities and farmer groups. The
design is very basic but management relies on the active participation
of users or local communities at all levels. This strongly advocated
approach for improving irrigation performance has rarely succeeded
in other countries.

A characteristic feature of the configuration of irrigation systems in
mid and southern China is the number of large, medium and small
reservoirs, which form an integral part of the systems. Large
reservoirs created by the construction of large dams are connected to

67
medium reservoirs and to hundreds of thousands of village reservoirs
and ponds. For example, the Pi-Shi-hang Irrigation districts, which
serve 680 000 hectares in Henan province, consist of a network of
canals connected to five large reservoirs, 24 medium-sized reservoirs
with a total active capacity of 420 million m
3
, 113 small reservoirs
with an active capacity of 205 million m
3
and 210 000 storage ponds.
The reliability and flexibility of water delivery of these systems are
very high.

China has developed a water-saving technique for irrigating paddy
fields consisting in alternating wetting with shallow water and drying
periods. This method is now applied on about 3.5 million hectares
out of the 21.3 million hectares of irrigated paddy fields in China. It
not only saves a considerable volume of water but also leads to
higher yields of rice. Application of this method requires a high level
of management at both on-farm and off-farm levels.

A singular feature of irrigation in China is found in its management
as a result of a series of reforms that took place in the water
management sector during the last decades. The authority for owning
and managing irrigation projects is determined according to
investment. Large irrigation districts are usually managed by
organizations at various levels such as prefecture, county, township
and village. In the 1980s, the government launched the production
contract responsibility systems in the rural areas to support
individual initiatives. The government also changed irrigation
management from centralized control to contract management in
order to facilitate decentralization. The contracting organization may
be a company, a farmers group, a joint household or an individual.
The contractors have the right to operate and manage the irrigation
facilities and should take full responsibility for profits and losses. As
a result of the contract management, the management organization is
optimized; especially, the workers income is closely related to their
performances of the contracted targets. China is now experimenting
with several models of contract management, particularly in
Shandong province. China is clearly a country where management
improvement has been a substitute for a very basic water control
infrastructure.

68
6. NORTH AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Development of modern irrigation in the three North African
countries (Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) started in the late 1930s,
more than fifty years later than in South Asia and Egypt, accelerating
only after World War II to reach peak development after
Independence. This late development was possibly the reason for the
fundamentally different approaches to the planning of irrigation
projects in that region. According to verbal sources, the low level of
education of the rural population stimulated the colonial government
agencies to design irrigation projects which met the dual objective of
being operated with minimum intervention of operators and simple
operational procedures and being flexible enough to meet the
irrigation requirements.

An intensive research programme with the support of the private
industry led to the development of hydro-mechanical equipment to
automatically control upstream or downstream water levels and
water flows as well as fixed static structures such as flow limiters
and long-crested weirs, known also as duckbill weirs. These weirs
provide nearly stable water levels in canals. The concept of canals
operated by downstream and upstream control and the combination
of these techniques were refined over the years. The use of these
innovative designs became standard practice for irrigation projects in
these three countries and in most Mediterranean countries. It was
later extended to other regions but generally on a project, case-by-
case basis.

The canals are designed to be able to answer irrigation requirements
during peak demand for the cropping pattern adopted at design stage.
However, the specific design capacity is multiplied by a factor of up
to 50 percent from the main system to the tertiary canals to provide
some flexibility in order to accommodate variations in demand and
deviations from the project cropping pattern. For example, the design
capacities of the Doukkala project in Morocco increases from 0.65
l/s/ha for the main canal to 1 l/s/ha at the tertiary level.


69
Most of the main canals are concrete-lined and the secondary and
tertiary canals consist of prefabricated canaletti (flumes) using the
most advanced pre-stressing concrete techniques. The concrete lining
of main canals is about 30 percent thicker than the lining of canals of
similar sizes in other countries.

As a result of the high standards of design and construction, and the
small variations in water levels, the life of the irrigation systems is
remarkably better in these three North Africa countries than in some
other regions. Some projects built in the 1950s are still under
operation. The first rehabilitation projects in Morocco were related to
undersized projects built before World War II, which became
incompatible with the intensification of irrigated agriculture.

Another feature of irrigation in Morocco is the systematic consolida-
tion of irrigable lands before the installation of the infrastructure.
Before project, irrigable lands are highly fragmented and boundaries
of individual plots are randomly organized. The model adopted by
the Moroccan administration in the 1960s, after testing different
models, is based on the same principle as the model used in Gezira in
Sudan. The objective was to facilitate the adoption of modern
irrigation scheduling and mechanized farming practices in a context
of smallholdings. Geometric blocks of 30 hectares were divided into
four to six crop strips of equal width and the farm holdings were
arranged with boundaries parallel to the other direction. Permanent
quaternary canals were associated with a farm road and farm ditch.
The number of farm plots was reduced about five times in some
projects.

To be successful this model requires the strict discipline of the
farmers in respecting the government-imposed cropping patterns and
joint organization of agricultural works within each crop strip. The
farmers progressively deviated from the imposed cropping. How-
ever, the most serious deviation from the original plan was in on-
farm water management. The quaternary canals owned collectively
by the farmers of a block were not maintained, and land levelling

70
badly degraded, eliminating the possibility to adopt furrow irrigation
or border irrigation. The farmers came back to the century-old
inefficient irrigation method of small basins.

Although there are some variations between regions, water
distribution in Morocco is largely decided by the irrigation agencies
(ORMVA). The basic principle of water distribution is that each
farmer receives a predetermined volume of water per irrigation turn.
ORMVA decide on the implementation of the irrigation turn, its
duration, and the volumes per hectare for the various crops,
depending on the availability of water in the storage reservoirs.
Farmers can decide whether to take water during a turn or to reduce
the duration. They sign a note of acceptance, which specifies the
date, time, duration discharge and total volume delivered which will
be used for assessing the water charges. Although the system has the
capacity to be operated on prearranged demand and to provide the
flexibility required to meet the farmers needs, it is essentially a
centralized system. This mode of operation was justified when rain-
fed farmers were converted into irrigators a few decades ago. It does
not respond to the needs of modern agriculture in Morocco.

Irrigation in the North African countries is not performing at the
expected level, although the level of technology of the delivery
system is of the highest standards. The main reason may be found in
the poor on-farm use of water, which is related to the outdated
delivery procedure and land consolidation model.

7. IRAN

Iran is an interesting example of a country without national design
standards. Two basically different approaches to irrigation planning
are found in that country. In the Khuzistan province in the south, old
design standards of the Bureau of Reclamation have been used for
the design of the Dez multipurpose project and adopted for all
irrigation projects in that region. In the northern provinces, the most
frequent design standards are those introduced for the design of the
Isfahan and Guilan projects by a French consulting firm with long
experience in North Africa. The two design standards used in the

71
northern and southern parts of Iran belong to the category of fully
gated systems. The design objective in both cases is to distribute
water according to requests of individuals or group of farmers with
flexible scheduling. However, they differ by the control function. All
gates in the south are manually operated whereas the northern
systems benefit from a high degree of hydraulic automation, which
simplifies their operation. Box 7 provides a detailed discussion of the
Guilan project, which is a unique success story of transfer of
technology from an arid region to the paddy systems with humid
climate along the Caspian Sea.

Box 7: The Guilan project

Most parts of Iran have an arid or semi-arid climate. However, Northern
Iran between the Caspian Sea and the Elburz mountains is reminiscent of
the mid-south region of China, with skilfully terraced paddy fields
bestrewn with plastic-covered nurseries. As in China, the traditional
irrigation systems comprise many small reservoirs. The 142 000-ha rice-
predominant Guilan project was built in the 1960s. The irrigation
infrastructure is typical of those found in North Africa with a network of
concrete canaletti supplied by canals equipped with long-crested weirs,
automatic hydraulically operated gates and modular distributors. This
unusual combination of East Asia farming practices with Western
technology is unexpected in the Middle East. The high level of performance
of that project is little known among the irrigation community, possibly
because of the lack of external financial assistance. A rapid assessment of
the project in 1995 concluded that the project is performing as expected
at design stage, after nearly 30 years of operation. The volume of water
diverted for the irrigation of the command area compares well with the
one calculated at the feasibility stage. The low level of vandalism and
tampering with control structures is an indication of the high level of
satisfaction of the farmers. Three factors can explain the harmony
between actual and expected results: the calculations of the water
requirements at farm level were supported by detailed tests to determine
the evapotranspiration and, more important, the percolation losses; the
water control system is user-friendly, reliable and does not require
frequent adjustments of gate openings by operators; and the rainfall
pattern during the growing season is relatively uniform, without high
intensity precipitation and excessive drought spells.

The Guilan project contradicts the paradigm that a design consisting
in reticulated fully gated canals is not suitable for irrigation projects

72
in the humid tropics. It also contradicts the well-accepted paradigm
that the irrigation technology of arid and semi-arid countries is not
suitable for humid tropics.

8. MALAYSIA

Malaysia is another example of a country without national design
standards. Foreign consultants have introduced three different design
standards that reflect their own experience, as illustrated by the
examples of the Muda, Kemubu and Kriang-Kerian schemes.

The Muda scheme: This 98 000-ha scheme, designed by a British
firm, accounts for 40 percent of the national rice production and is
critical to the rice policy of Malaysia. The main infrastructure is
comprised of two storage reservoirs connected by a tunnel, a
diversion dam further downstream, and two main canals. At the time
of construction, a remote monitoring system was installed to provide
the operating engineers with real time information on reservoirs and
canal water levels and on rainfall in the catchment area between the
storage and diversion dams to predict the unregulated flow. Cross
regulators on the main canals are equipped with overshot motorized
gates. Furthermore, pumping facilities and tidal gates were installed
to recapture the drained water in the lower part of the scheme. The
combination of these devices with remote monitoring has contributed
to the efficient operation of the main system. Service to rice growers
was irregular, however, because of the difficulty of managing the
delivery system equipped with manual gates. To achieve the better
control over volumes of water and timing required for new
techniques of direct seeding, the farmers install their own pumps to
lift water from public canals and drains.

The Kemubu scheme: This low-lift pumping scheme, designed by
French consultants, adopted downstream control for the main canal
and the pumping station and upstream control for the secondary

73
system equipped with long-crested weirs and modular distributors.
17

As in the Muda scheme, the operational problem is the difficulty of
controlling flows in the minor system and meeting the requirements
of increasingly diversified cropping. Different control structures
were later adopted for an extension of the scheme, consisting of
adjustable flow-dividing structures.

The Kriang-Kerian scheme: That scheme was developed using the
old standards of the Bureau of Reclamation, mainly the use of
constant head orifice. These are discussed in the next section. This
project is now under modernization through low-cost automation.

9. INDONESIA

Irrigation in Indonesia, particularly on Bali and Java islands, has
been practised for the cultivation of rice since ancient times. The old
and non-technical systems represent a large part of the six million
hectares currently irrigated. Design of the systems built during the
colonial period and soon after Independence was rustic. Individual
control structures were improved over time, but not enough
consideration was given to the functioning of the entire system.
To improve measurement and control of flows diverted from
one parent canal to the next-level canal, an adjustable weir
gate, known as Rominj gate, was developed in the 1950s. This
gate is a precise measuring device but has the disadvantage to
be sensitive to the variations of water level in the parent
canal, which are frequent in run-of-the-river projects.
Indonesia design standards were improved in the 1980s by
foreign consultants. One of the proposed innovations was to
replace the flashboards of check structures by conventional
sliding gates. The main reason for this change was that
flashboards were risky and difficult to handle.


17
For a long time, the Kemubu scheme suffered from poor functioning of
the pumping plant, for reasons not well identified, which affected the
operation of the main canal under downstream control.

74
The result of these two independent local improvements is a
combination of hydraulic structures, the worst solution for the
operation of a canal system. The sensitivity and hydraulic stability of
structures are discussed in several books and design manuals (Horst,
Ankum).
The Rominj gate was again unsuccessfully introduced in the design
of the Mae Khlong project in Thailand.

10. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Application of modern technologies in water projects in the United
States attracted the attention of many foreign visitors, as is the case
in other developed countries (drip irrigation and wastewater use in
Israel, Canal de Provence in France). The most comprehensive
application of automation through central supervisory control is
found in the control system of the Central Arizona project, which
delivers water to urban, agricultural and industrial water users in
central and southern Arizona. This system includes a large number of
in-line pumping plants. The first effort to develop devices for local
automatic control of canal systems in the United States dates back to
the mid 1950s and was faced with the problem of instability in case
of large flow changes.

Less well known is that many of the canal irrigation systems in the
United States are far from having been modernized. Almost all
control on irrigation canals is upstream control. Some systems still
operate on rigid rotation schedules. In California, it is unusual to
operate on pure demand. Water delivery to users is usually arranged.
The average advance time for request is 26 hours for the 60 irrigation
districts surveyed by Burt. Almost none of these districts have
downstream control. Farmers, however, enjoy flexibility in flow
rates. The flexibility in delivery can be offered because of excellent
communications, high mobility of staff, high density of turnouts and
judicious use of proper equipment such as weirs, regulating
reservoirs and recirculation of excess water through interceptors and
numerous applications of remote monitoring through SCADA. There
is almost always measurement of flow rates at all turnouts.


75
In the Grand Valley district in Colorado, water is delivered on
demand with a crude upstream control and few regulators. The
system is operated at high flows with a large proportion of flow back
to the river.

Burt has identified some aspects of the social and legal environment
in the United States that have a bearing on the success and failure of
irrigation projects, such as:
The projects benefit from water rights and have the ability to
enforce water rights and rules;
Projects have excellent legislation for the formation of water
user associations. Most of these associations are operated as
businesses with professional management staff responsible to
the elected boards of directors;
Most consultants in modernization are private local
consultants who must live with the results of their work; news
on bad projects travel fast;
Good living conditions (health, education) in rural areas; and
There is excellent infrastructure for spare parts and new
equipment.

This environment is not found in many developing countries, where
modernization of irrigation projects is therefore more difficult to
undertake and sustain.


C. USE OF OLD U.S. BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
STANDARDS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Design standards for the projects supported by the Bureau of
Reclamation in the Western States are the most detailed standards
that can be found worldwide. They have been widely disseminated
through technical assistance and consulting firms to a number of
developing countries. In some of these countries, such as Thailand,
the Philippines, Mexico and Turkey, U.S. Bureau standards have
become de facto national standards for a few decades. In countries

76
without national standards, they were used for specific projects, such
as the Kriang project in Malaysia or the San Lorenzo project in Peru.

The basic design consists of a reticulated network of canals equipped
with manually operated structures. Cross regulators are equipped
with one or more radial or flat gates which are hand-operated or
motorized. In some cases, a small lateral weir section is provided for
emergency purposes, not for normal operation. Typical off-takes are
equipped with constant-head orifice gates designed to measure and
control flows. That infrastructure is in theory compatible with
different methods of water distribution: prearranged, rotational or
centralized.

A large number of these projects have a low hydraulic, agronomic
and economic performance, as demonstrated by a number of recent
studies (FAO). The U.S. Bureau standards were acceptable for the
specific conditions of some Western States: short rainy season,
relatively large farms, good road network and communications, and
highly dedicated and trained operating staff. Good quality of
construction was also a condition of success. All these conditions
were generally not present in the countries which adopted these
standards. An exception is the arid north-western region of Mexico
(states of Sonora and Sinaloa). As in the U.S. irrigation districts,
water is distributed in Mexico on a prearranged basis whereas
centralized distribution is the rule in East Asian countries.

Projects supported by other federal or state agencies in the United
States are not necessarily applying the Bureau standards. A number
of irrigation systems and large conveyance systems in the United
States have been upgraded either at design stage or later through
rehabilitation and improvement programmes. Automated data col-
lection and control has become an integral part of most large water
delivery systems and is becoming more prevalent on smaller projects
as well. From its beginning with simple gate controllers, canal
automation has evolved to include large supervisory control systems
that oversee entire projects. The California Aqueduct and the Central
Arizona project are operated under a central remote system. The Salt
River project, which was under remote monitoring, has been

77
upgraded to remote control. As noted earlier, small-scale canal
modernization projects are now widespread throughout the western
United States. For example the gates of the composite check
structures of the Dolores project have been automated. (Composite
structures consist of a combination of one or two automated gates
and long-crested weirs.) Several terminal reservoirs were built in the
Coachella project, still operated for gravity application, to allow the
farmers to convert from surface irrigation to low volume application
methods. The Sevier River water user association in Central Utah has
installed low-cost solar-powered automatic gates and SCADA. This
user association has adopted the principles of gradual upgrading and
retrofitting of existing infrastructure that are generally adopted for
the modernization of irrigation systems in the western United States.
None of these upgrading/modernization tools were applied in
developing countries to improve the performance of gated projects.
The 175-km-long main canal serving the 90 000 ha Phitsanulok
project in Thailand is a case in point (Box 8).

Box 8: The Phitsanulok project in Thailand

The Phitsanulok main canal is equipped with 24 manually checked
structures. It was designed and built without any provision for remote
monitoring. Recent studies show large discrepancies between operating
rules and actual operations. On average the levels upstream of check
structures are about .7 metre below the target levels. Because of the
variations in water level, flows diverted to secondary canals are poorly
controlled. There is inequitable distribution at macro and micro scales.
Constant-head orifices, of which there are more than 1100 at the field
channel heads, are used neither for measurement of flow nor for fine
adjustment to deliver a varying rate of discharge. The farmers have
responded to the deficiencies in the operation of the gravity Phitsanulok
irrigation systems by installing individual wells during the last decade. The
average density of wells estimated by a survey in 1996 was nearly 20 wells
per 100 ha. The development of groundwater has given farmers a greater
level of control over their crop calendar. They do not have to wait for
water to be available and they can plant their crops at times that seem
best according to their own situation. Groundwater development was also
observed in the Northern Chao Phraya and Mae Khlong projects in
Thailand.


78
In 1991, the Bureau of Reclamation issued a manual on canal system
automation. The preface of this manual points out that the earliest
designs of canals were based on the maximum flow conditions
(known as full supply). This design does not provide the requisite
flexibility to operate a canal efficiently. The first canal automation
was crude but it was immediately successful. Advances in the
operation of canals through the use of automation have paralleled the
development of the electronics industry.

This statement is of major relevance to the canal systems in
developing countries designed for maximum flow conditions; they
simply cannot work as designed. Unfortunately, the signal sent by
the Bureau of Reclamation on the limitations of old designs was
ignored by many design engineers. Institutional reforms alone,
including participation irrigation management, will not change this
situation.


D. CROSS-COUNTRY TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY

Transferring any technology from one environment to another should
be approached with caution. Great caution is particularly needed in
the irrigation sector where the site conditions are specific and the
success of the transferred technology depends on physical, social and
economic factors. Horst points out in his recent book that many
donors stipulated that foreign consultants were to be involved in the
planning, design and supervision of construction. These consultants
came from different parts of the world with different irrigation
technologies and traditions. Each of them was educated and
experienced in one of the distinct irrigation schools. Owing to the
weak position of the national irrigation departments in terms of
experience in planning and design and the dominant role of the
donor agencies, the consultants were able to decide on the
technology to be adopted, that is to sell or impose their own
technology. In other words, [it was] the country of origin of the
consultants [that] determined the type of technology, and not the
compatibility with the local physical and socioeconomic
environment.

I
Technical and managerial deficiencies in irrigation projects










Photo 1 Dominican Republic:
A tampered gated check structure







Viet Nam. Dau Tieng Project






Photo 2 Canals designed for
operation at full supply cannot
deliver water to the lower level
because of a lack of check
structures







II



Photo 3 Farmers
correct the design
deficiencies by
constructing bamboo
weirs




Proportional division and structured design

Photo 4 Pakistan:
SWABI Project in the
North West Frontier
Province. Use of flow
dividers, a more
transparent device for
proportional flow
strategy than the
conventional outlets
used in the Indus
River Basin





Photo 5 Argentina:
An adjustable flow
divider providing
some flexibility in
apportioning flow in
proportional systems



III
Photo 6 Nepal:
Sunsari-Morang
Project. An example
of transfer of the
structured design in
a humid tropic area
resulting in some
conflicts between
farmers on when to
close the irrigation
season

Hydraulic automation: examples of long-crested weir type cross-
regulators




Photo 7 Iran: Guilan
Project. A typical
long crested weir









Photo 8 Iran: Guilan
Project. A double
long-crested weir on
the 100 m
3
/s capacity
main canal




IV



Photo 9 Malaysia: Kemubu Project.
A composite cross-regulator
consisting of a gate and a weir












Photo 10 India:
Majalgaon Project. A
double weir on a
distributary canal








Photo 11 Iran: Guilan
Project. A cross
regulator consisting of
an automatic constant
upstream level gate
associated with a
conventional sliding
gate

V



Photo 12 France: A
cross regulator
consisting of two
automatic constant
level gates






Photo 13 Philippines:
An example of low
cost modification of a
gated structure in a
weir check structure





Land consolidation in Japan

Photo 14 Farm layout before land consolidation










Photo 15 Farm layout after land consolidation

VI
Conjunctive use


Photo 16
Pakistan:
Conjunctive
use of
ground and
surface
water using
the same
canal
system






Remote monitoring and remote control





Photo 17
U.S.A.
Coachella
Valley
Water
District.
SCADA








VII






Photo 18
Spain:
Cabral
Project,
SCADA













Photo 19
Morocco:
Haouz
Project.
Remote
automatic
control
(dynamic
regulation)






VIII








The active role of water users associations in the modernization
of irrigation projects



Photo 20 Mexico: Rio Fuerte Project. First stage:
Modernization of maintenance equipment and office
technology



79
Horsts observation applies to a number of developing countries
which do not have well-established practices of irrigation
engineering. In countries with large development of irrigation, the
state officials have often entrenched engineering practices. Foreign
consultants may face strong resistance from local engineers,
sometimes justified, to any proposed change in design of irrigation
projects. Irrigation departments in India and Pakistan have rigidly
adhered to their design standards for decades. It is only recently that
some innovative departments have agreed to adopt new standards.
Examples include a few projects in India (such as the Majalgaon
project in the state of Maharashtra and the major Narmada project in
Gujarat), and the high-level Pehur project and SWABI- SCARP in
the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan.

A number of lessons can be learnt from the examples of failed
transfer of experience.

1. India: Transfer of rotational distribution from northwest
India to the southern states

Despite the undoubted achievement of irrigation development in
India and the success of the Green Revolution in that country,
performance of irrigation projects, particularly in the southern states,
was far below potential. A strong group of local engineers supported
by financing agencies promoted the idea to transfer, with some
adjustments, the design package of the northwest states to the
southern states, which they considered as the best system in India.
This idea materialized in the World Bank-supported National Water
Management Project (NWMP) in 1985. The main objective of the
project was to improve agricultural productivity through the
provision of a more reliable, predictable and equitable irrigation
service. The most important element in scheme improvement was the
preparation of an operational plan. On the basis of water availability,
system characteristics and agricultural options, the plan was expected
to define how the system would be operated with respect to the
timing and quantities of water deliveries. The project concept was to
convert the demand-type systems into supply systems. To ensure
equity in water distribution, the structured design, an adaptation of

80
the rigid rotational warabundi delivery combined with ungated canal
technology, was developed for the project. The structuring level is
the point downstream of which the canal system is ungated. This
system was not tested in a pilot project in paddy-growing areas
where field-to-field irrigation was traditionally practised. The system
does not have the flexibility to adjust to the important variations in
rainfall and soil conditions which prevail in southern India. In the
warabundi states, soils are rather uniform and rainfall does not
contribute much to the total water. More important, groundwater,
which is a reliable and flexible supply, accounts for a large portion of
the water resource, a critical difference for the farmers of southern
India, where groundwater resources are not as rich and widely spread
as in the alluvial northern plains.

The project was rated unsatisfactory at completion. During a seminar
on modernization of irrigation systems in 1998, IWMI reported the
failure of the concept of the structured design and equitable supply
technology in the Bhadra scheme, which was part of the NWMP
project: The provision of reliable and equitable supply was not
achieved as expected at appraisal. The changes in cropping patterns
and agricultural calendars stipulated in the operational plans had
not been followed; the advancing of the kharif season could not be
implemented (Sakthivadivel). Lessons from this project were taken
into consideration in the formulation of a new generation of projects
in India. The thrust is now on improving productivity through system
improvement linked to turnover of management of the systems to
user associations.

2. Transfer of rotational irrigation from India to Thailand and
Nepal

Thailand. An attempt was made in the Nong Wai project in
Northeast Thailand in the early 1980s to introduce the warabundi
delivery system to irrigation projects in Southeast Asia. This ill-
designed transfer of a rigid delivery system got dismal results
because of its incompatibility with rice irrigation and the local
culture of Thai farmers.


81
Nepal. Because of the difficulties in operating the Stage-I
rehabilitation of the Sunsari-Morang project (58 000 hectares), which
was designed as a fully gated, manually operated system, a structured
design was adopted for the rehabilitation of Stage II: downstream of
the off-takes of the sub-secondary canals, the system is ungated.
Tertiary canals are supplied through concrete flow dividers and the
watercourses through adjustable proportional modules, as used in
northern India. The operation of the Stage II subsystem has been
considerably simplified compared to Stage I. However, it has lost
flexibility in meeting the variations in demand due to factors such as
local variations in rainfall and excessively long staggering of rice
cultivation. Towards the end of the growing season, some farmers
still request irrigation water while others are ready to harvest. The
lack of a drainage system and of operational flexibility in the
structured design imposes severe operational constraints, which
affect productivity. The duty limitations of the main system (0.7
l/s/ha) and the low flows of the Kosi River during the dry season
make this run-of-the-river project very dependent still on monsoon
rainfall.

This example from Nepal challenges the opinion shared by some
irrigation professionals that farmers prefer proportional distribution.
They certainly prefer equity over anarchy but they can also
understand that equity and higher productivity can be achieved
through improved water control and alternative operational
procedures.

If the water user associations in Sunsari-Morang in Nepal were
organized before the physical improvements, farmers would have
been in a position to formulate their preferences for not freezing the
infrastructure into an inflexible distribution system.

3. Transfer of technology to user-managed systems in Indonesia:
a case of farmers rejection of inappropriate technology

Agro-socio-religious associations in Bali, called subaks, have
developed a water division technology throughout the ages. The
subak water division technology consisted of institutional

82
arrangements backed by temple priests and of weirs dividing flows
into negotiated shares. These centuries-old subak systems were first
disrupted by the arrival of the Green Revolution in the 1970s, which
changed the agricultural practices required for cultivation of shorter
maturing rice varieties and more dramatically by the government
plan to modernize the subak systems with the assistance of a
financing agency and foreign consultants. The modernization
project attempted to introduce the technology and water distribution
procedures which were the norms in the government-built and
-managed irrigation projects in Java. The project consisted in the
replacement of the dividing weirs existing at each bifurcation by
adjustable structures to be set and reset on the basis of frequent
calculations of the crop water requirements
18
. Gates were installed to
regulate and measure flows. In general the subak members did not
accept this technology. They handled the gates to accommodate the
division of water according to their perceptions of water allocation
and removed the gates to restore the former fixed-proportion division
structures. Towards the end of the project, the state officials
reluctantly accepted the subak technology and built new or improved
existing proportional division structures.

Curiously neither the change of irrigation technology nor its social
implications have been discussed in any of the design reports or even
in the completion reports. The technology practised on Java was
transferred to Bali with no concern for the opinions and perceptions
of the subak members (Horst). This pure engineering approach is
unthinkable today, given the emphasis now placed by financing
institutions on a participatory approach in the design of irrigation
projects.


E. CONCLUSIONS

Different strategies of water delivery and water control have been
used for the development of canal irrigation schemes throughout the

18
Irrigation requirements for irrigation projects in Java are determined by
application of the pasten system.

83
world. Obsolete designs can be found in both developed and
developing countries. Many irrigation projects in the United States,
Western European countries and Australia built decades ago are
inefficient in terms of water and energy use and are in urgent need of
modernization. Advanced concepts and electronic-based sophisti-
cated technology have been used for nearly three decades and have
been introduced in a number of developing countries such as India
(Majalgaon, Narmada), Egypt (the Nile telemetry system), Morocco
and Jordan (dynamic regulation). Hydraulic regulation has been used
in most Mediterranean countries for about fifty years. Modernization
of irrigation, as defined earlier, is not an issue limited to developed
countries, as has been stated during some workshops.

The concepts used for the development of irrigation by colonial
powers since the mid 1800s in India, Egypt and Sudan were well
adapted to the conditions and to the objectives of irrigation in the
past. Irrigation was extensive and the water resources were not
regulated by large storage reservoirs. Conditions have changed with
the intensification of irrigation due to the pressure on land related to
the escalating demography and to the construction of regulating
reservoirs. Relaxation of the discipline of the users required for an
adequate operation of ungated systems in the Indo-Gangetic plain is
often mentioned as the cause of poor performance. The diversion of
larger volumes of water due to the construction of large dams has
exacerbated the problem of siltation, particularly in the smaller
canals, which in turn has contributed to the inequity of distribution
since the flows diverted through the farm outlets are influenced by
the upstream water level. The farmers responded to the economic
changes by tapping additional water resources to overcome the
limitations of the existing systems, which were undersized for
intensive irrigation. Farmers captured more water from the canals by
illegal means (Indus basin), replaced animal-driven pumps by motor
pumps (Nile valley) and installed a dense system of shallow wells or
deep tube wells. Groundwater accounts now for a large proportion of
the water used for irrigation in the alluvial plains, which is a normal
evolution of irrigation development. The unique feature of the Gezira
scheme in Sudan, consisting of night storage in minor canals, makes
possible to shift from a rigid delivery to an on-demand system, an

84
advantage greatly appreciated by the farmers of that scheme in the
absence of groundwater or any other water resource, including
drainage water in the area.

The design standards adopted in many developed and developing
countries after the mid 1900s to deliver water according to crop
demand were conceptually more advanced. However, most of them
failed to meet that objective because of the deficiencies of the water
control technology and complexity of the operational procedures.
Managing an irrigation system equipped with manually operated
gates at each branching point is a very complex task. In many cases,
the systems were designed to be operated at full capacity without
consideration for operation at less than full supply. Even with the
best vigilance of the operators, operation of these systems is usually
inefficient and/or costly in developed countries. Computer-assisted
calculations of irrigation targets based on assessments of crop water
requirements were developed for use in some countries where
centralized scheduling is practised, such as Indonesia. The demands
imposed on agency and irrigators to collect innumerable data, to
calibrate devices and to control flows often prove beyond their
capabilities and interests. Some information which is frequently
lacking or inaccurate is data about seepage and percolation, return
flows and spatially variable rainfall. Where the inability to take such
factors into account renders irrigation targets unacceptably inaccu-
rate, water is distributed based on qualitative judgments by field staff
or through interference by farmers. This makes the water delivery
system uncertain.

The use of technology with adjustable structures, which has been the
norm during the three decades of intensive development of irrigation
in developing countries from 1960 to 1990, has badly affected the
performance of irrigated agriculture in many countries. It is now
impeding the transfer of management to user associations.

With hindsight, the outcome appears to have been inevitable, raising
questions about the realism of the foreign consultants plans and the
Bank support to them. These experiences give the impression of
donors and technical assistance teams using the (East Asia) region as

85
testing ground to try out new designs, with encouragement from
agency headquarters, but without a realistic assessment of local
management capacities of the incentives for irrigators (Rice). This
paper argues that even the best qualified managers and operators
would not be able to manage these systems to the highest standards
over long periods without the assistance of modern communication
systems and/or remote monitoring. The issue is in the deficiencies of
the design that imposes very complex methods of operation, not in
the organizational weaknesses of the irrigation agencies.

The farmers served by these low-performing manually controlled
systems have reacted in different ways to be able to adopt modern
cultivation practices and diversified cropping patterns: tampering
with control structures, pumping from canals, drains, borrow pits
and, more recently, tapping groundwater resources which provide the
flexibility and reliability needed for modern irrigation at farm level.
These responses from the farmers are inevitable and irrigation
agencies are generally passive since they can do very little to stop
them. However, it is not a proper use of limited water resources. It is
an unacceptable situation with regard to the increasing competition
for water and environmental considerations. In some countries,
farmers use untreated water which is rich in nutrients and constitutes
a reliable resource for yearly intensive cultivation of high-value
crops in suburban areas (for example in Punjab, Pakistan).

The development of hydraulic automation in North African countries
in the 1950s helped to a large extent the operation of canal irrigation
systems by reducing the number of structures requiring readjust-
ments and the frequency of resetting control structures. Automatic
downstream control eliminates the need for complex calculations of
water releases. It is therefore puzzling that these innovative design
standards have not been adopted in other countries. The reasons for
the slow adoption of these or any modern techniques are both
administrative and behavioural:
Lack of economic pressure on irrigation agencies;
Lack of contractual motivation for consultants to introduce
new concepts;

86
Resistance to change by irrigation managers, engineers and
others; risk aversion and adherence to outdated designs;
Lack of operational experience and service motivation by
planners and irrigation departments;
Lack of sufficient training at all levels, from the university to
the field;
Lack of evidence of the superiority of modern systems in
terms of agricultural productivity;
Failure of some pilot projects for technology transfer
(Sidorejo in Indonesia, Cupatizio in Mexico)
Use of economic tools during the preparation of projects
focusing on cost comparisons of different equipment and
overlooking the potential benefits to be expected from
modernization.

Some transfer-of-technology projects have been unquestionable
success stories, such as the Guilan project in Iran or the Muda project
in Malaysia. Regrettably these projects have not attracted the
attention of international research organizations.

Many transfer-of-technology experiments have failed because of
inadequate attention to all the key factors that determine the selection
of an appropriate irrigation strategy. For example, the transfer of a
rigid method of water allocation from arid zones to rice projects is
doomed to fail if the farmers have not been involved in the process
which affects their cropping patterns and practices and if they do not
perceive some improvement in the quality of service. Replacing
fixed water-dividing structures in traditional run-of-the-river
schemes without a regulation of the water resources is also doomed
to be rejected by the farmers, as was the subak system in Bali.

Suitable water control technology is not enough, however, to achieve
high agricultural productivity. It is assumed that the mediocre
productivity of irrigated agriculture in Morocco, particularly for
cereal crops, is mostly related to the centralized method of irrigation
scheduling, with little participation of the irrigators, lack of
maintenance of on-farm works, and constraints imposed by the land

87
consolidation model, possibly in combination with deficient use of
non-water inputs. It would be useful to carry out an in-depth analysis
of the performance of selected irrigation projects in that country to
check the validity of the above assumption.

A last category of projects is those with faulty design, such as wrong
selection and combination of control structures which amplify the
fluctuations of hydraulic conditions in irrigation canals and those
using unrealistically complex procedures to determine irrigation
releases.


VIII. THE FORCES OF CHANGE

Irrigation has well served in the past in supporting the
increase in food production, but it must evolve to adjust
to the new economic environment (Gardner).

In the above chapter, it was noted that the farmers are responding to
the changes affecting irrigation in their own environment by looking
for more reliable and flexible water supply. Other fundamental and
potentially far-reaching changes are challenging some of the basic
premises supporting the use of irrigation, as least as traditionally
practised. This chapter systematically explores these changes and
their effects on the future of irrigation.

The key forces that are going to influence the role and performance
of irrigation over the next decades are:
Population growth, with an even faster growth of the urban
population and the continuous prevalence of rural poverty in
several regions;
Competition over water supplies between agricultural and
other uses (municipal, industrial, recreational, energy
generation, and environmental uses) and the rising cost of
developing new resources;
Globalization of the economy resulting from international and
regional agreements (GAAT, NAFTA, European Union) and

88
rapid advance of the information and communication
technologies;
General public awareness that the environment should be
protected;
Diminishing government implications due to changes in
institutional policies; and
Climatic changes such as a higher recurrence of drought
years.

These changes have and will continue to have considerable
consequences for irrigated agriculture. The demand for food from
irrigated lands will increase, as demonstrated by all models of food-
supply predictions. In high-income developing countries, changes in
diet patterns from the increased urban population will shift demand
for staple food towards processed food obtained predominantly from
irrigated fruits and vegetables. For example in Taiwan, rice
consumption has declined from 130 to 65 kilograms per capita over
the last three decades. In some countries, the governments will
gradually eliminate the protection of commodity prices to comply
with international agreements. As a result of the globalization of the
economy, irrigated agriculture will be driven by market forces and
will have to compete on both international and national markets.

The forces of change have and will continue to have serious impact
on water supply to irrigated agriculture. Given the increasing
competition for water, supply to irrigation is going to decline in some
countries. The excessive cost of developing new water resources and
the reduction of subsidies to public irrigation systems will contribute
to this decline.

Irrigated agriculture is gradually becoming more accountable for the
environmental degradation, in particular the degradation of water
quality through contamination by salt and agrochemicals. Stronger
regulations are required, together with mechanisms to arbitrate
conflicts between environmental and irrigation interests.


89
Response from farmers

In some countries, subsistence irrigation will continue to cover a
large share of irrigated lands and provide staple food to poor farmers.
However, the general trend towards the modernization and efficiency
of irrigated agriculture will apply to small-farmer communities
operating now at subsistence level. The objectives will be yield
increases, reduction of water consumption and energy costs, and crop
diversification.

In some countries irrigated agriculture will predominantly become an
economic activity driven by market forces rather than a way of living
supported by government subsidies. Increased economic efficiency
will be a condition for farmer survival, implying continuous im-
provement in technology, agricultural practices, farm management
and marketing. Savings on water, labour and energy costs will in-
creasingly become major considerations. Confronted with increasing
costs of water supply, combined with reduced protection on agricul-
tural prices, farmers will have to react by producing more with less
water. They will shift to higher-value crops and crops consuming
less water and they will adopt water conservation strategies to reduce
water losses.

Farm structures will shift towards well-operated and well-financed
units with strong integration in domestic and international marketing
and processing industries. This trend took place in OECD countries
during the last decades, where the people directly involved in
farming activities now represents 3 to 5 percent of the total
population. Small farms persist, however, in countries like Japan and
Taiwan through weekend farming by aging farmers and highly
subsidized agriculture. Irrigated agriculture is in the shrinking phase
in some countries, as a result of urbanization and other factors. In
Taiwan, irrigated lands decrease from 560 000 to 380 000 hectares
over the last three decades.

Some irrigation projects with excessively high operating costs
because of high lift pumping or adoption of extensive irrigation with
high maintenance costs, which are not sustainable without govern-

90
ment subsidies, will have to be abandoned unless governments keep
a policy of subsidizing irrigated agriculture.


Response from technology

Few industries produce the same product in the same way they did
fifty years ago and irrigation should not be an exception. However,
irrigation technologies have slowly evolved for centuries and age-old
practices can still be observed in many rural areas. Significant
changes took place in the late 1800s with the construction of large
reservoirs providing regulated water to the users and the possibility
to balance water supply and demand. A second wave in advance in
irrigation technology was the development of more efficient
application methods at farm level, including surface methods and
pressurized systems. However, application of most of these
techniques is still limited in most developing countries. The most
striking change in irrigation in the large irrigated areas in Asia during
the last two decades has been the phenomenal development of
groundwater, which is discussed in Chapter 9.

Because of farm sizes, markets and other factors, farmers in
developed countries have readily adopted advanced irrigation
technology. This adoption has had a major effect on productivity.
Labour, energy and costs of water have considerably influenced the
adoption of technologies and the use of water for irrigation in the
United States. Since 1968, the total irrigated acreage has increased
by 37 percent, but the average water application has decreased by
about 15 percent from 6 300 to 5 400 m
3
per hectare. Surface
irrigation methods that were used on 90 percent of irrigated lands are
still the most common methods of irrigation but are now used on
only 55 percent of the lands. Sprinkler irrigation is now used on 41
percent of the lands. However, the traditional sprinkler methods,
hand moved and solid set, are rapidly loosing ground in favour of
centre pivot and linear move, which are now used on one quarter of
irrigated lands in the United States.


91
Labour requirements for irrigation systems vary greatly. Automated
systems, such as automated micro-irrigation and centre pivot, have
relatively low labour requirements. The recent success of the low-
energy precision application labelled LEPA is due to its combined
low labour, low energy and water-saving advantages.

The slow adoption of new irrigation technology in developing
countries is a perplexing issue. While there have been changes in
irrigation technology in the United States, Australia and Western
European countries for example, little of this development has
affected irrigation in many developing countries. Some of the
constraints are obviously the unavailability of capital, low costs of
water and energy and pricing policies that fail to provide incentives
to conserve water, and the absence or limitations of high-value crop
markets and marketing facilities.

However, a main reason for the slow transfer is that the focus of
attention in irrigation technology and research in developing
countries has occurred at farm level, and not at the level of operation
of the main and conveyance systems. Farmers will not invest in
water-saving technologies if the service of water is not reliable and if
the incentives for saving on water, energy and labour are not strong
enough. Bottrall observed in 1979 that it is only if the main water
distribution system is well operated that many other important
management objectives can be satisfactorily realized, and it is only
then that high returns can be obtained from agricultural extension
advice and the increased application of other complementary
inputs.

Response from agricultural research

The agricultural research centres deserve credit for their contribution
to the achievements of the Green Revolution. The Irrigated Rice
Research Institute estimates that their new rice varieties have
increased water productivity threefold through increased yield and
reduced crop duration. IRRI and CIMMYT are optimistic that they
can develop high-yielding drought-tolerant varieties. However,
development of reliable irrigation is crucial to realizing the benefits

92
of high-yielding modern varieties. Growing crops under a mild water
deficit requires a high degree of water control and farmers
confidence in the irrigation system (Molden).

Advances in genomics and genetics will certainly contribute to the
challenge of food and water production but would have to be
associated with improvement in water delivery.

Response from the governments

As a consequence of diminishing implication of governments in
irrigation management, stakeholders and the private sector will take
an increasing share of responsibilities at all stages of irrigated
agriculture. The governments will support the establishment of new
policies, legislation and institutions. The decisions about water
allocation and planning will be gradually made at the river-basin
level through a consensual process among users.

The governments will continue shifting from supporting the con-
struction and rehabilitation of large irrigation infrastructure towards
establishing new policies to support private-sector participation,
water conservation and environmental protection.

The forces of change discussed in this section will force the irriga-
tion engineers to design more efficient and responsive irrigation
systems.


IX. THE EXPLOSIVE EXPLOITATION OF
GROUNDWATER RESOURCES

The contribution of irrigated agriculture to food and fibre production
has continued to increase despite the lower level of investments for
developing new irrigable areas and the focus on rehabilitation of
existing schemes. One of the reasons is the exceptional increase in
groundwater development in recent decades. Declining extraction
costs due to advances in technology and in many instances govern-
ment subsidies for power and pump installation have encouraged

93
private investment in tube wells. Groundwater in India now supplies
more than 50 percent of the irrigated area. Due to higher yields in
groundwater-irrigated areas, groundwater is central to a significantly
higher proportion of the total irrigated output.
The significance of groundwater in the Indian economy is due to the
fact that agricultural yields are generally higher by one third to one
half in areas irrigated by groundwater than in areas irrigated from
other sources. Groundwater offers greater control over the supply of
water than do other sources of water. As a result groundwater
irrigation encourages complementary investments in fertilizers,
pesticides and high-yielding varieties, leading to higher yields
(World Bank 1998). It is the reliability of groundwater that allows
farmers to take the risk of investing in fertilizers, which substantially
increase their crop productivity (Ahmad).

In Pakistan, groundwater development through private tube wells has
grown exponentially, especially in Punjab. According to a 1991
survey, about 46 billion m
3
of groundwater are used for irrigation in
the Indus basin, 85 percent of which comes from private tube wells.
However, salinity continues to present a threat to the sustainability of
agriculture because of the recycling of large quantities of poor-
quality groundwater from the top of underlying aquifers.

Groundwater exploitation for irrigation is not limited to arid or semi-
arid countries. The explosive use of diesel pumps in the Chao Phraya
and Mae Khlong river basins in Thailand has responded to the
increase demand for dry-season cultivation of high-value crops and
the unreliable supply from the large gravity irrigation systems.
Commenting on the changes that have affected the Phitsanulok
project in Thailand, Manuddin pointed out the advantages of
groundwater over canal water: With an average of one well for 5
hectares, virtually all the farmers now have access to groundwater.
The development of groundwater has given farmers a high level of
control over their crop calendar. They do not have to wait for the
availability of canal water, and they can plant their crops at the time
that seems the best according to their own situation. The benefits that
the changes have brought to farmers include increased quantity of

94
water, increased reliability of water and freedom for the families to
choose their own crop strategies.
The rapid development of groundwater has recently been observed
even in some projects that were designed to meet the full
requirements needed for intensive irrigation and to provide reliable
service. About 9 000 private deep wells have been installed in the
40-year-old Tadla project in Morocco during the last five years, i.e.
nearly one well for 10 hectares. The main reason for this recent
farmer initiative might be the higher frequency of dry years that
affects annual water allocation and the constraints imposed by the
current water allocation strategy.

Overexploitation and an associated decline in water quality have
been occurring in many parts of the developing world, particularly in
the arid and semi-arid regions. Water tables are falling at an alarming
rate often 1 to 3 metres per year. These regions include some of the
worlds main grain production areas such as the Punjab in India and
the North China Plain. About two thirds of farmlands in North China
are facing serious problems of groundwater exploitation (Shah).

Groundwater has played a critical role in food production by
agriculture over recent decades. However, groundwater is a major
emerging problem in many parts of the world. Some areas have
reached the point where overexploitation is posing a major threat to
the environment, health and food security. The potential of
groundwater development for irrigation may be reached soon.
Seckler pointed out that many of the most populous countries of the
world have literally been having a free ride over the past two or
three decades by depleting their groundwater resources and he
concluded that the results could be catastrophic for these countries
and, given their importance, for the world. The explosion of
groundwater irrigation in some countries is a farmers response to the
lack of flexibility and, in the worst cases, to the unreliability of the
canal irrigation systems. Water recycling and the conjunctive use of
groundwater are rarely considered in the original design of
irrigation projects. They mostly happen as a desperate response from
farmers who are unable to obtain their share of irrigation water
from the canal or from system managers as a way to rectify problems

95
of management capacity and shortcomings of the original design
(Bhuiyan).

These brief considerations on groundwater use in irrigation lead to
the conclusion that there is an urgent need to improve the quality of
service from water surface systems and for a well-thought
conjunctive use of both surface and groundwater. The present
passive attitude is no longer acceptable.


X. THE PLANNING PROCESS: A GLOBAL GAME PLAN

Definition of modern design

Several definitions of modern design have been proposed. The
following definition was adopted during an FAO seminar on
modernization held in Bangkok in 1996: Modernization is a
process of improving resource (labour, water, economic and/or
environmental) utilization by upgrading (as opposed to merely
rehabilitating) the hardware and software in irrigation projects,
while maintaining or improving water delivery service to farms.

Another definition was proposed during another FAO-supported
workshop on the valorization of irrigation water in the large-scale
irrigation schemes of North Africa in 1999: Modernization is a
process of rehabilitation of irrigation systems during which
substantial modifications of the concept and design are made to take
into consideration the changes in techniques and technology and to
adapt the irrigation systems to the future requirements of operation
and maintenance. Delivery of water should be as flexible as possible,
with demand irrigation being the ideal solution.

These two definitions slightly diverge on the technical aspects. The
first one focuses on the shift from supply to service-oriented and the
second one on future requirements of operation and maintenance.
The first one suggests the use of advanced concepts of hydraulic
engineering, the second of new techniques and technology, which
may include modern equipment for remote control. The main

96
difference is that institutional and organizational changes, including
more active farmer participation, are attached to the first definition.
The principles attached to the 1996 definition have been elaborated
in a number of publications. These principles are summarized in the
next section.

Principles of modern design

The overriding principle of modern irrigation is that irrigation is a
service to farmers which should be as convenient and efficient as
possible. Farmers ultimately have to generate the benefits which
keep the system functioning. Modern irrigation schemes can be
conceived to consist of several subsystems or levels with clearly
defined interface, where water is measured and controlled.
Each level is as financially autonomous and hydraulically
independent as possible.
Each level is technically able to provide reliable and timely
water delivery to the next lower level. At each level there are
the proper types, number and configurations of gated
turnouts, measuring devices, communications systems and
other means to control flow rates and/or water levels as
desired.
Each level is responsive to the needs of its clients. Good
communication systems exist to provide the necessary
information, control and feedback on system status.
Each level of delivery has confidence, based on enforceable
rights, in the reliability, timeliness and equity of the water
which will be supplied from the next higher level. Effective
mechanisms for conflict resolution are in place.
The hydraulic design of the water delivery system is created
with a well-defined operational plan in mind. The operational
plan is established with a clear understanding of the needs of
the end users.
The hydraulic design is robust, in the sense that it will
function despite changing dimensions, siltation, and commu-
nication breakdowns. Automatic devices are used where

97
appropriate to stabilize water levels in unsteady flow
conditions.
Motivated and trained operators are present at all levels of the
system. They are not necessarily the farmers themselves but
preferably hired staff. Instructions for individual operators are
well understood and easy to implement.
Maintenance is the obligation of each level. Maintenance
plans are defined during design and are adequately funded
and implemented.
There is a clear recognition of the importance and require-
ments of agriculture and of the existing farming systems.
Engineers do not dictate terms of water delivery; rather
agricultural and social requirements are understood at all
levels and in all stages of the design and operation process.

A modern design is the result of a thought process that selects the
configuration and physical components in light of a well-defined and
realistic operational plan that is based on the service concept. A
modern design is not defined by specific hardware components and
control logic, but use of advanced concepts of hydraulic engineering,
irrigation, agronomy and social science should be made to arrive at
the most simple and workable solution.

The most important issue and the one that often receives superficial
attention during project preparation and appraisal is the ability of the
system to achieve a specific level of operational performance at all
levels. A precondition for high performance is that the design must
reflect the objectives and requirements of the future operation. As
long as the design of irrigation systems is understood as a classical
engineering task of designing structures, essential operational
questions will not be addressed.

A proper operational plan is one that combines the various
perspectives and helps reconcile conflicting expectations between the
users, the project manager, the field operators and the countrys
policy objectives. The two preliminary steps in the planning of

98
irrigation projects are the definition of objectives and the associated
decision about water deliveries.

Project objective: A preliminary step in the planning of an irrigation
project or its rehabilitation is the definition of project objectives that
depend on the country policy for irrigated agriculture. The objective
could be to maximize the value of production by unit of water or unit
of land. Project designs vary whether the project objective is to
develop export-oriented commercial farming or to support rural
population, alleviate poverty in rural areas and limit rural migration
to urban centres. The original design of a project may no longer be
compatible with the forces of change, which are affecting irrigated
agriculture in many countries.

Water delivery: The second step in the planning of an irrigation
project is the decision about water delivery. This can be described as
the frequency, rate and duration of water deliveries at all levels of an
irrigation system. The various systems of water delivery are
described in the literature (FAO, Clemmens): rotation, arranged
schedule, limited rate demand and centralized scheduling. Most
traditional delivery systems have no or little flexibility built into
them. They do not attempt to match water deliveries to crop needs.
The stated objective is to obtain equity through simplicity of design,
although poor design, maintenance and operational problems may
prevent from achieving the objective. Modern irrigation projects are
designed with the stated objective to deliver water according to crop
requirements. At a minimum, the frequency and sometimes the
duration of irrigation should be adjustable.

As noted earlier, a water delivery schedule does not necessarily
imply a specific design or technology. A fairly rigid schedule of
water delivery to the farm turnouts may use modern irrigation
hardware and computerized decision support systems to make the
water delivery reliable and equitable. A primary advantage of using
modern design and equipment is that the operators can choose the
flexibility offered at various levels of the system. For example, the
different methods of water distribution in modern irrigation systems
in Morocco are variations of centralized scheduling (with the choice

99
given farmers on duration and timing), although the systems have the
capability to be operated on an arranged schedule. The reverse is not
possible. A project designed for rigid rotation through simple non-
adjustable structures or for proportional distribution cannot be
operated for flexible water distribution.
The most important step in the design of an irrigation system is water
control defined by three strongly related elements: the configuration
of the distribution system, the control strategy and the hydraulic
equipment.

Configuration: The configuration of an irrigation system is
obviously determined by the relation of land and water resources, the
topography and economic considerations. The design should incor-
porate as much as possible features that facilitate operation and
provide flexible irrigation service, such as buffer reservoirs and on-
farm reservoirs and use of low-pressure pipes instead of canals for
tertiary distribution. Buffer reservoirs are widely used in mid and
south China, in what is known as the melon on the vine system.
Buffer reservoirs can be located alongside main systems or at the
interface between two levels of management, such as between main
and secondary canals. The incorporation of reservoirs reduces to
some extent the need for sophisticated water control methods of the
main systems.

Water control strategy: The designer has the choice between many
control strategies for the operation of the system:
Upstream, downstream control or controlled volume
Local versus remote monitoring and control
Proportional versus adjustable control

The designer has also the choice between various configurations for
the automation of the canal systems:
Distributed control in which control is achieved through
independent automatic units;
Centralized control in which control is achieved through a
master station; and

100
Supervisory control combining distributed automation under
master supervisory control
19
. This configuration is known as
SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition).
These three systems are depicted in Figure 2 a, b and c showing the
same canal system equipped with different types of control
structures. The advantages and disadvantages of these different
configurations are discussed in technical publications. Under
distributed control, the system manager is not in a position to
supervise or control the entire canal system. Centralized automatic
control makes possible the use of highly efficient control logics but
the operation depends on the reliability of a communication system.
Under supervisory control, the central station makes decisions on the
lower-level strategy based on the data received from the local
controllers, also known as remote terminal units or programmable
logics controllers. These local controllers make changes to the
control devices according to the target instructions received from the
master station, such as maintaining a target flow rate or water level.
This system is less susceptible to communication system failure. The
centralized and supervisory control methods can involve varying
levels of participation of the master station personnel in making
decisions from manual to computer-directed control, which uses
specially developed computer programs using data from the entire
canal systems and modelling studies. Computer-directed control is
applicable to the most complex systems involving a number of
canals, reservoirs, pumping and/or power stations.

19
Supervisory control is defined by the Bureau of Reclamation as the
control of a system from a centralized (master station) over a
communication system and using remote terminal units at the canal
structure sites.


101

Figure 2 Alternative configurations of canal automated systems

102
The selection of water control strategies can have very different
effects on day-to-day operations. Certain control strategies eliminate
the need for advance scheduling of water deliveries, the need to
know exactly the flows at various sections of the canals, the
determination of lag time and the estimation of seepage and
operational losses. This is the main advantage of the basic
downstream control compared to the upstream supply-oriented
control methods, which require elaborate and complex predictions of
irrigation requirements. However, downstream control is not neces-
sarily associated with demand delivery. It is essentially a control
strategy often used to greatly simplify the operation of very long
canal systems, which is very complex under upstream control.
Demands from the next lower level of secondary canals can be either
under rigid rotation or flexible.

A single strategy is rarely used for an entire irrigation system. Most
projects combine two or more control strategies. A main canal can be
under downstream control and the distribution system under
upstream control; or the main canal can be under upstream control
and the distribution under proportional control (structured design in
Nepal). Many examples of combination of control strategies could be
provided to illustrate the wide number of solutions. The Narmada
system is designed for remote central control and the tertiary system
for proportional control using the structured design standards. The
King Abdullah canal in Jordan is operated by remote control under
dynamic regulation although rigid rotation is used for the distribution
of water from the pressurized pipe systems. The Coachella project in
California is operated under upstream control with the assistance of a
remote monitoring system. A large buffer reservoir at the end of the
canal absorbs the daily differences between orders and deliveries.
This reservoir supplies open pipelines which receive rigid deliveries
during 24-hour periods. Farmers have built numerous reservoirs on
their farms to increase the flexibility of irrigation required for the
mix of on-farm irrigation systems most suitable to the variety of
crops.

The selection of a control strategy has a major impact on several
aspects of the future performance of an irrigation system: ease of

103
operation, ability to provide a high quality of customer service, and
general efficiency. Projects designed for proportional division of
water through rigid and passive structures are the easiest to design,
construct and operate, but provide the least flexible service to the
users. Manually operated gated systems are the most complex to
operate to provide both quality of service and efficiency. Modern
design makes possible to improve service and efficiency but requires
more design skills and higher quality of construction and installation.



Figure 3 Complexity of different control strategies at design,
construction and operation stages

Some guiding principles for selecting a control strategy and
equipment

No control strategy and no equipment is ideal for all situations found
in irrigation projects. Many physical and institutional factors have to
be taken into consideration by the planners and designers. However,
there are some general principles, which are summarized here:
The delivery service should be as much as possible user-
oriented. Reliability and equity of water delivery are the basic
features of irrigation service. However, providing some form
of flexibility in duration, flow and interval of irrigation
should be considered during the planning stage.

104
Different control strategies could be combined within an irri-
gation system. The degree of flexibility could differ from one
level to another level of a canal system.
A key objective should be the ease of operation not
necessarily the simplicity of design or installation. This
principle is widely applied by other industries.
Automatic downstream control is well suited for long canals
because it eliminates the need for advanced scheduling and a
number of estimations. Use of downstream control for large
canals does not mean on-demand delivery at farm level.
Efforts to convert existing systems to downstream control
through the use of control algorithms have generally failed.
However, adoption of downstream control with the use of
automatic float-gates has been successful in new projects.
Manually operated gated systems are the most complex
irrigation systems to operate with high efficiency and
reliability. Using simple hydraulic principles and equipment
could make operation simpler.
Hydraulic automation requires a minimum of skills and
training, compared to electronic-based automatic controllers.
Proportional-division systems are the easiest to operate and
design. Basically these systems provide no flexibility in water
delivery. They cannot respond to agricultural changes.
However, some improvements in the design of proportional
dividers make it possible to easily adjust the sharing of
incoming flow.

In summary, the selection of a control strategy is not limited to a simple
choice between gated and ungated systems, as implied in the
oversimplification of the 1994 World Bank irrigation review. There are a
number of options available for each level of a canal system and they can be
combined to define the most desirable global solution in order to provide
ease of operation and a higher level of service. These options are
summarized in Figure 4.


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Figure 4 Options for ease of operation and a higher level of service

Control equipment: The last step is the selection of control
equipment that fits with the selected control strategy. A number of
publications provide detailed description of the equipment available
to control flows in canal systems. The 1993 ICID publication on
Automation of canal irrigation systems presents the salient features
and fields of application of the various types of equipment which
may be used, including:
Passive regulators: long-crested weirs, flow dividers, level
controllers;
Conventional gates: leaf gates, drop-leaf and flap gates;
Automatic controllers: electro-mechanical and electronic
controllers;
Self-operating gates for automatic level control: float-
operated gates;
Instrumentation: position, level and flow sensors;
Means of communications: radio and cable methods; and
Equipment for remote monitoring and control master stations.

A number of physical, social and institutional factors, which are
discussed in Chapter 11, should be considered in the selection of
control strategy and equipment. Questions such as the possibility of

106
crop diversification or conversion to crops with higher irrigation
requirements, the risk of silting of canals operated under variable
flows, the capabilities of the field staff to operate and maintain
electronic equipment, the acceptance of the operating rules by the
farmers and their understanding of how the structures function
should all be considered. The answers to some of these questions are
beyond the scope of responsibilities of a design engineer. However,
it is his responsibility to select control structures that are robust, easy
to operate and interact with the other structures in the vicinity to
minimize the fluctuation of hydraulic conditions.

One of the most important points is the right selection of the
combination of check structures and turnouts. Clustered structures
react differently to fluctuations of upstream level and flows depend-
ing on their characteristics. The sensitivity of these structures and the
hydraulic flexibility of the different combinations of overshot and
undershot gates are discussed in detail in several reference books
(Ankum and Horst). Figure 5 shows the sensitivity of overshot and
undershot hydraulic structures (weirs and orifices) and the effect of a
twofold increase of the head on the flow rates.

The World Bank review of the Indonesian irrigation sub-sector
(1990) rightly observed that very often the solution adopted has
been sluice-gated controls along the parent canal combined with
Rominj gated off-takes (overshot gates). Unfortunately this is the
worst of all combinations from the hydraulic viewpoint since it is
extremely unstable. Small deviations have a proportionally great
effect. The negative effect on the operational stability of a system
was overlooked when selecting the Rominj gate, which has excellent
metering potential when considered in isolation. Figure 2 shows the
best and the worst combinations of hydraulic devices to minimize the
fluctuation in water levels and diverted flows.

The constant-head orifice gate, found in many schemes throughout
the world, is a flow-control and -measuring structure which is
particularly difficult to operate. Very few field operators and gate-
keepers are familiar with the functions of the two gates. In practice,

107
these devices are rarely used for water measurement despite their
good capability in laboratory conditions.


Figure 5 Flow rate fluctuations through weir and orifice control
structures
Note: When the relative head doubles, the relative flow rate increases by
180 percent over a weir and only by 40 percent through an orifice

Detailed design and construction drawings are the last steps in the
design of irrigation projects. The design process moves from art to
conventional structural engineering, which is the domain of civil and
mechanical engineers. The emphasis is on the dimensioning of the
structures and reinforcements and the mechanical and structural
integrity analyses. Manuals and guidelines are widely used during
this phase.

The configuration of an irrigation system and the selection of control
strategies are the design steps that require the most imagination.

108
Although there are economic considerations to select among various
options, there are no design manuals that can be applied as in
structural engineering. The selection of the control equipment
requires up-to-date skills to keep up with the developing technology.
The principles of hydraulic regulation, including passive and reactive
regulators, although developed half a century ago, have not widely
been used outside the Mediterranean countries, because of a lack of
awareness of these techniques and in many cases resistance and
aversion to innovation. Computer-assisted operation and telecom-
munications entered the irrigation sector about two decades ago and
have been used to improve the performance of old systems under
manual operation.
























Figure 6 Combination of check and turnout structures


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Modernization of existing schemes

Modernization of irrigation schemes raises major challenges for
designers and policymakers. How much of the existing infrastructure
can be saved? Which level of investments can be supported by the
users? How much can be achieved by substituting hydraulic infra-
structure by management inputs? The first step in this modernization
is an in-depth diagnosis of the present performance of the system.
The objective of this diagnosis is to identify the changes that have
taken place since its original design, and the deficiencies in design
and management. The diagnosis should determine the best ap-
proaches to solving the problems and if changes in water deliveries
and system control strategy are desirable or necessary. The rapid
appraisal process presented in Chapter 13 proves to be a very
successful diagnosis tool.

After the diagnosis of an existing scheme is complete, a master plan
needs to be developed. The master plan needs to define short-term
and long-term improvements. A list of priorities must be developed
based on realistic financing availability. Of major importance is the
choice of the configuration of the automation system between
distributed, centralized and supervisory control.

Changes or improvements in control strategy are difficult to test in
real conditions without disrupting the operation of canals. The
development of digital computers and advances in numerical
methods in recent years has gradually helped to solve this problem.
Flow simulation models in recent years have made possible to
develop and test various control strategies (Mutua). Two approaches
have been adopted to make use of these new tools.

Simulation of canal response for different scenarios: This
approach has been used in recent years by IIMI and other researchers
to simulate different operational scenarios for improving the
operation of complex canal systems, for example the Chasma Right
Bank canal in Pakistan, affected by high silt content, and the Gal Oya
canal in Sri Lanka, which has a large number of gated cross
regulators. The complex operational rules derived from these studies

110
have not been fully adopted by the agencies responsible for the
operation of these canal systems. A simulation study of the Pyramid
Hill No 1 canal in Victoria State in Australia concludes: Opera-
tional scenarios to improve manual operation yielded only marginal
improvements in the operational performance, thus reinforcing the
view that significant gains in the quality of operation cannot be
attained under manual operation.

The studies show that canal operation can be considerably improved
by adopting the SCADA model because of the advantages of real-
time information on water levels and flow rates and the possibility to
respond to fluctuations more accurately and timely.

Centralized automatic control systems: A number of problems
have been reported with centralized automatic control making use of
control logics. Although a number of different control algorithms and
automatic devices have been used, the desired results have not
always been attained. Balogum states that some projects have failed
and even led to unstable control because of the failure to take into
account the dynamic properties of canal systems. Some specialists do
not recommend to use these models for real-time control but to use
them for defining operational procedures. Several efforts were made
in Alberta, Canada, to achieve downstream control; but to date none
has been satisfactory due to control algorithm limitations (Ring). As
stated earlier, this method should be used for the most complex
systems because of the complexity of design and equipment and the
skill level required which is not always available in either developed
or developing countries.

An emerging approach to the modernization of existing systems is
the basic low-cost, incremental SCADA model. This model is
commonly adopted by the irrigation districts in the United States for
the modernization of old manually gated systems. Based on
financing availability, four or five sites are equipped every year. For
example, the proposed SCADA system for the Yuma irrigation
district serving about 4 500 hectares provides for the automation of
20 sites, including the head of main canal, laterals, waste way and

111
supply wells, which have been given five levels of priority. The total
cost estimate is about US$350 000.

Box 9: Turlok irrigation district, California: the modernization process

The 62 500-ha Turlok project serves 6 500 customers in the San Joaquim
Valley. The Irrigation District owns and manages more than 400 kilometres
of canals. Most of the land is flood irrigated. The district is progressively
modernizing the infrastructure through the construction of long-crested
weirs and installation of supervisory control.

As discussed earlier, some developing countries have adopted or
developed modern design standards, but very few have converted
from conventional to modern design standards for the modernization
of existing schemes. One remarkable exception is the modernization
of the irrigation system in the Nile River delta, which is at the cutting
edge of the technology by attempting to solve the problem of night
storage within the secondary canals, a solution imposed by the
constraints on land availability for the creation of farm reservoirs.
Another example is the modernization of irrigation in the Jordan
Valley, where the originally manually operated main canal has been
converted to dynamic regulation and the canal distribution to
pipelines. In Asia, modern designs are being used for the construc-
tion of the High-level Pehur canal in Pakistan, for the Narmada main
canal and for the GAB project in Turkey. After a long period of
failed attempts to install automated systems, Taiwan has now suc-
cessfully placed most of its large irrigation districts under basic
SCADA control. Malaysia has commissioned a study on Moderni-
zation of irrigation water management systems in granary areas of
Peninsular Malaysia. The 20-year-old remote monitoring system of
the MUDA project has been recently converted to a SCADA system.


XI. PARAMETERS INFLUENCING PLANNING AND
DESIGN OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS

The design of a project configuration and the selection of an
irrigation strategy and of control equipment to meet that strategy
depend on a number of physical, social, managerial and economic

112
considerations. Not all of these are of equal importance in different
projects, but all should be considered during the planning stage.

Water resources

Water resources and their variability are the critical elements in the
determination of the irrigable areas. Studies on the balance of water
supply and demand form the main part of the conventional feasibility
studies of irrigation projects. Simulation model programming tech-
niques have made it possible to examine various alternative solutions
for different cropping patterns and seasonal or multi-year storage
considerations.

The less reliable the water supply, the less feasible it is to adopt a
water control strategy to meet precise crop irrigation requirements.
There is little need for precise flow and water-level control. It is for
this very reason that most traditional run-of-the-river projects have a
proportional control strategy. The main objective is the equitable
distribution of diverted natural flows that respond rapidly to the local
variations of rainfall. The adoption of another strategy is doomed to
fail. A case in point is the modernization of the subak projects in
Bali, Indonesia. Farmers or groups of farmers can, however, improve
the dependability of available water by constructing farm reservoirs,
as was done in China before the construction of large reservoirs, or
by tapping groundwater.

Groundwater resources

The development of groundwater in surface irrigation projects is a
relatively recent phenomenon. The original objective may have been
the mobilization of additional water resources, particularly in
projects where canal systems were designed for extensive irrigation.
However, the prevailing incentive for farmers to develop
groundwater may now be the flexibility and reliability of that
resource. Groundwater now accounts for about 40 percent or more of
the total irrigation resources available in some originally water-
surface projects. The contribution of groundwater has changed the
overall game plan. Irrigation strategies adopted in the past to support

113
a drought protection policy should be reassessed. In some cases, use
of groundwater can be limited to drought years, if the canal capa-
cities and surface resources can meet the requirements in normal
years (United States). In other cases, such as in the Indus basin in
Pakistan, conjunctive use is needed year round to satisfy the
intensification of irrigation. The poor quality of irrigation service in
the middle and lower sections of these systems frequently requires
the use of groundwater for precise irrigation for high-value crops,
and even for pre-germination rice-seeding techniques.

The two positive and obvious effects of groundwater exploitation
that have led to its rapid development are that it is an easy means to
get access to a huge extra resource and, when developed privately, it
provides the ideal flexible water delivery service. At the same time,
these developments have had negative side effects that have
important consequences for the future planning of irrigation
development:
The development and use of groundwater as an additional
source of irrigation water has often served to indemnify the
irrigation agencies responsible for canals systems from bad or
poor water deliveries, effectively taking away the incentives
and need to improve their systems and service;
The exploitation of groundwater has often escaped the
regulation measures of allocation and scheduling, thus
facilitating its overexploitation. This situation requires an
integrated approach in the planning and design of future
irrigation developments.

How the integrated management of both ground and surface water
resources can best be integrated in the design of the delivery and
conveyance system still remains a challenge. The recent increased
attention paid to integrated management of surface and ground water
at the river basin level has also brought about new concepts of
irrigation management. The aquifer can be regarded as a reservoir
that can be refilled with surface water. Some imaginative solutions
could also be developed to improve the performance of the old-
fashioned surface systems designed for protective irrigation. These

114
systems could deliver multiple services ranging from a basic
proportional delivery to a highly flexible demand delivery, for
example if operated under the refusal operation mode. In surface
projects designed for meeting full crop requirements, groundwater
could be saved for dry years if the farmers are satisfied with the
quality of service and particularly the flexibility offered by the
surface system.

The strategy to be adopted for conjunctive use of surface and ground
water strongly depends on the quality of groundwater. If ground-
water is brackish or saline, one way is to alternate its application
with application of surface water of better quality; another way is to
blend good-quality water with brackish water in order to extend the
water supply, gaining quantity at the expense of quality (Hillel). The
choice depends on the tolerance of crops to brackish water, the
degree of salinity of groundwater and the type of soil. The cyclic
strategy allows the soil to be flushed from time to time.

Hillel points out the great importance of the frequency of irrigation
in salinity management. If irrigation is applied frequently, the con-
centration of salts in the soil solution is maintained at a level close to
that of the applied water, and the progressive build up of salinity is
prevented, which points to the need for modern irrigation at farm
level.

Silt load

The problems and challenges associated with silt-laden water in
irrigation are frequently poorly understood, and underestimated, by
irrigation specialists. There is an inherent conflict between flexible
delivery operation and maintenance costs of schemes with a high
sediment load. Flexible delivery results in unsteady flow conditions
and occasionally low flow velocities, thus increasing the risk of
siltation of canals. Unstable channels put enormous strains on main-
tenance and undermine the operation of canals. The problem of silt
management was underestimated in designing the Chasma Right
Bank canal in Pakistan, possibly because of optimistic assumptions
on the silt trap effect of the upstream reservoir. As indicated earlier,

115
considerable studies using computer simulation models were later
carried out by IWMI to determine how to manage silt and operation
of this canal at less than full supply. Techniques and management
procedures to reduce substantially the silt load should be developed.

Rainfall

The variability and intensity of rainfall require flexibility in the
operation of irrigation systems to achieve overall efficiency. The
system should be able to respond quickly to a sudden fall in demand
of irrigation water. Operation of irrigation schemes in arid regions is
usually easier because smaller variations in demand require fewer
provisions to regulate unsteady flows. In humid areas, the system
should be able to satisfy the total evapotranspiration requirements in
case of dry spells during the wet season.

It is still normal practice to use the concept of excess probability of
rainfall in the calculations of crop requirements, as recommended in
FAO Paper No 24. A more realistic method would be to use the
actual data rainfall for each 10-day period of the entire period. The
conventional method has the disadvantage of smoothing out the
deficits of water during the drought periods. Irrigation departments in
China use the more precise method of actual rainfall for each period.
The capacity of computer modelling is no longer an obstacle to the
wide adoption of that method.

The underestimation of water deficits due to the use of rainfall
probability for the calculations of canal capacity contributes to the
discontent of farmers in humid areas, as they try desperately to save
their crops during dry spells.

Soil conditions

Differences in soil conditions influence on-farm irrigation require-
ments. Crop evapotranspiration is equal in well-managed fields on
sandy and clay soils. There are major differences between these soils,
however, with regard to optimum frequency flow rate and duration.
Sandy and clay soils have different holding capacities and water

116
intake rates. Coarse soils have a low water-holding capacity and a
high intake rate. Fine soils have a high water-holding capacity and a
low intake rate. Sandy soils must be irrigated frequently. No single
irrigation schedule (rate, duration and interval) is optimal for all soil
types. Recognition of the importance of customizing water deliveries
to different soil types is a main reason why modern irrigation
schemes provide as much flexibility in water delivery as possible,
rather than forcing the users to adapt to a rotation with a specific
flow rate, duration and frequency.

Crop diversification

There are inherent differences among crops in relation to needs for
water at particular growth stages, root depths, optimal frequency of
irrigation, and drought resistance. For example, grain crops are very
sensitive to water stress during the critical periods of pollination and
milking of grains. Vegetables are particularly sensitive to water
stress because of shallow root zones. Water supply must be very
reliable to meet the quality requirements of high-value markets.

Rice cultivation has particular water requirements: high flow rates
are required during land preparation. Low design capacity of canals
increases the time of land preparation and imposes its staggering
over too long a period to benefit from the optimal use of rainfall.
During the growth period, most farmers prefer the traditional method
of continuous supply of water, which enables them to maintain the
desired level in the paddy fields to reduce weed problems. Attempts
to introduce rotational irrigation in rice schemes have failed in many
countries, such as Thailand and the southern states of India, because
of farmer resistance. By contrast, water-saving irrigation (WSI)
techniques are practised in many projects in Southern China where
distribution of water from terminal reservoirs is fairly reliable. WSI
techniques involve maintaining a very thin water layer in the field
and alternate wetting and drying. Bhuiyan observes that WSI
techniques as those applied in China, however, require a high degree
of management control and infrastructure at both the farm and
system levels. For much of developing Asia, management capacity to
implement such strategy does not exist. More supervision and labour

117
are required. Adoption may also be hampered by farmers concern
about not having access to water when they need it because of lack
of reliability in the system water supply performance.

The very high capacity of irrigation canals for paddy irrigation in
Western Africa, over 3 l/s/ha in some cases, where high yields are
obtained, contrasts with the limited flows used for the design of
projects in South Asia for instance, the Sunsari-Morang project in
Nepal, where main canals were designed on the basis of Indian
standards. At the end of the growing season, conflicts arise between
farmers who still require irrigation water and those who are ready to
harvest. There is no management solution to this situation in a struc-
ture design scheme in the absence of drains. Undersized capacity of
canals imposes the staggering of cultivation over too long a period. It
is not only a question of management capacity as argued by Bhuyian.

Existing infrastructure

To a large extent, the layout, original design criteria and standards
used for an irrigation project limit the options for its rehabilitation
and modernization. The slope of the main canals, if too steep (over
15/20 cm per kilometre), determines whether or not operation can be
converted from upstream to downstream control. The relative design
capacity also is a major constraint, unless remodelling of the canals
is found to be economically viable. In extensive irrigation projects
with the objective of spreading water thinly, the design capacity
decreases from upstream to downstream since only seepage losses
are considered. In responsive irrigation projects, the design capacity
increases when moving downstream to accommodate the need for
flexibility.

Considerable imagination is required of the designers to modernize
the existing infrastructure of irrigation projects since in most cases
there are severe constraints. Construction of collectors and buffer
reservoirs, conversion to pressurized systems and modifications of
cross regulators are some of the tools available for the modernization
of the configuration and control technology.

118
Land tenure and consolidation

Modern principles of irrigation scheduling and water application
methods require specific arrangements of farm boundaries. Ideally
plots have to be arranged within a geometric grid, with the proper
choice for their orientation and slope for the application of surface
irrigation methods. Since the 1960s, the policy of the Ministry of
Agriculture in Morocco has been to systematically consolidate irri-
gable lands before the construction of any modern irrigation system.
Design of the distribution system layout and of the blocks within
which consolidated plots will be arranged is the first step in the
design process. Ideally each plot should have a direct outlet from/to
the irrigation and drainage system.

Basically, two land consolidation models have been tested and later
adopted in a few developing countries. These two models reflect two
different ideologies of irrigated agriculture: planned economy or
liberalism. Under the former model, the irrigation blocks are divided
into equal crop strips, crossing the farm boundaries, for semi-
collective farming activities. Governments largely impose the crop-
ping pattern. This model is used, for example, in the Gezira project
in Sudan, in most of the modern systems in Morocco and in some
smallholder systems in Zimbabwe. Irrigation in principle should be
organized by crop and not by farm. Under the latter model, the farm
plots are arranged so that each farm has individual access to the
tertiary canal. Distribution of water is organized by turns of
individual farms, not by crop strips.


119

Figure 7 Land consolidation model in an interventionist agricultural
economy
Note: Each crop has an individual turnout

Figure 8 A land consolidation model in a liberal agricultural
economy
Note: Each farm has one or more individual turnout

120
Management and technical capability: the field reality

The operational performance of irrigation systems is influenced by
the capacity of the management agency to apply the operational rules
defined by the designer. Central scheduling used in most Asian
countries is apparently simple since there is no need for farmer input.
However, increasingly complicated operational procedures have
been developed to determine the irrigation requirements as accurate-
ly as possible. Voluminous operation manuals have been compiled in
which lengthy stepwise procedures are given to arrive at operational
schedules. Horst observed that these procedures require an enor-
mous amount of data collection and processing. Shortage of staff, in
combination with little contact or feedback from the field and in-
sufficient or unreliable water measurements because of malfunction-
ing structures, often results in a situation in which the administrative
activities remain largely paper exercises with little relevance outside
the office.

The difficulty of managing manually operated, fully gated irrigation
systems has already been discussed. If the strategy of water delivery
is to closely follow the irrigation requirements, frequent adjustments
of control structures are necessary. Horst again cautions about that
design: When combined with hydraulically unstable canal systems
with structures cumbersome to operate, the often poorly trained field
staff are confronted with an operational task which is effectively
impossible.

Friendly user design is a concern that seems not to have permeated
the irrigation industry, as it has the car or computer industry. In the
irrigation sector, designers have rarely operated the systems they
have designed. They have not confronted the operational reality at
field level, the poorly trained operators, the poor road communi-
cations, and the harsh and changing climatic conditions.

Economics and maintenance costs

The IPTRID issue paper entitled Realizing the value of irrigation
system maintenance provides innovative thinking on the conse-

121
quences of neglect of maintenance and the issue of low investment
cost and high maintenance costs versus higher capital cost and less
maintenance: Conventional economics, using a high discount rate
for future costs and benefits, fails to show the importance of
maintenance in sustaining the life of a system and the livelihood of
farmers. Since costs and benefits occurring in the future are highly
discounted, little benefit is apparently to be derived from extending
the life of a new project beyond 10-15 years. The result of this
thinking is that a project with a low initial cost, which deteriorates
quickly and is dependent for continued survival on timely and
properly funded maintenance, is preferred to one that is constructed
to need less maintenance because it appears cheaper. Yet for a
farmer and also for a nation it is important that a scheme endures.

Designs for low maintenance giving easier and less costly manage-
ment, reduced maintenance, lower service fees and greater effective
life need to be given more importance during project preparation. In
the future, systems will be operated and maintained by farmers.
Engineers and planners need robust information on the links between
design, maintenance spending, performance, whole life cost and
sustainability.

The above considerations are particularly applicable to the lining of
irrigation canals, which often deteriorates very quickly because of
the poor quality of construction of rigid canals.

Institutional setup

Management of a relatively large system is generally divided
between various units. The locations of the interfaces between these
levels have a great influence on the way the system is operated and
its hydraulic performance. In many cases, the irrigable area is
divided in geographic areas from upstream to downstream and
includes both the main and the distribution systems (Thailand). That
approach has many disadvantages since there is not a single unit
responsible for the main system, which forms a continuous hydraulic
unit. If management of the main system has to be divided between
units, the interface should be located at hydraulic breakdowns such

122
as reservoirs. This principle is widely used in South China, where the
provincial, counties and village water bureaus share the responsi-
bilities of management.

Modern irrigation systems consist of several levels, with clearly
defined interfaces. Each level is responsible to provide any agreed
service to the next lower level. The trend is to transfer the
management of large sections of irrigation systems to large user
associations, such as in Turkey and Mexico. Precise, yet user-
friendly, control of flows and measurement of volumes at the
interfaces between management levels are needed.

Operational capability of irrigation agencies and user
associations

It has been stated earlier that the performance of irrigation systems is
influenced by the capacity of management agencies and of user
associations, if any, to apply the operational rules defined by the
designer. This statement can also be turned around: the performance
of an irrigation system is influenced by the capacity of the designer
to design systems that conform to the operational capacity of the
management agency. Both statements have some value.

The designer should identify the current restrictions in the institu-
tional setup before incorporating concrete changes in the procedures
and rules of water allocation, scheduling and delivery. In some cases,
designers introduce changes in their designs that have too far-
reaching consequences on the institutional and operational setup.
These changes may not conform to the expectations of the agency or
of the water associations. The rejection of the conversion of the
traditional systems in Bali from proportional division to adjustable
water allocation, which was implemented without consulting the
users, was discussed earlier.

Changes in the managerial skills of an irrigation agency could be part
of a planned modernization programme, however. For example in the
State of Victoria, Australia, the modernization programme was
accompanied by a change in the workforce. The job of the newly

123
created positions of planners was more complex than that of the
original water-masters and commanded higher pay. On the other
hand, the job of field operators required less skill since it did not
include the planning and customer contact roles of the original water-
masters. A new pay and career structure was designed for the
operation staff. The new planners were recruited using a competitive
selection process. Improved productivity of the workforce was a
major benefit gained from the introduction of centralized commu-
nication and planning. Most of the user associations in Mexico have
turned down the staff from the irrigation agency at the time of the
turnover and recruited younger staff with better academic skills.

Pricing and water allocation strategy

To improve the economic efficiency of water use, donor agencies
have encouraged borrowing countries to adopt reforms in institutions
and policy. These reforms include the establishment of water rights
and trade of these rights, and the pricing of water on a volumetric
basis. The design of irrigation projects should take these reforms into
consideration. A rigid system with fixed distribution structures is not
compatible with water trading, since physical modifications of
dividing structures may be needed for each transaction. In adjustable
systems, measuring devices are needed at each bifurcation at the
level water trading is expected. For example, if water trading is
encouraged between user associations along a branch canal,
measuring devices are needed at the outlets serving each association.

Capacity of the construction industry

Failure to meet construction standards is a common factor in some
projects being unable to fulfil their specific function. This is
particularly true for the modern irrigation systems making extensive
use of hydraulic regulation devices, such as level-control automatic
gates, modular distributors and long-crested weirs. This modern
design is very sensitive to problems with improper installation.
Baffle distributors provide constant flow rates within very strict
fluctuations of the upstream water levels and do not tolerate
downstream-submerged conditions. Such design requires perfect

124
vertical settings of all the control structures. The lack of awareness of
the requirements of high-quality construction standards in some
countries has contributed to the failure of some pilot projects. It may
justify the resistance of some specialists to adopt or recommend that
technology.

Projects making use of conventional sliding gates are much less
affected by inaccurate installation of the control equipment.
However, they are more difficult to operate and have to be associated
with measuring devices and/or local controllers.


XII. THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNIZATION: OPTIONS

Irrigation project design and management are very complex and each
project has different constraints. Designers and institutional re-
formers must have a very comprehensive understanding of these
constraints and options in order to make the proper choices for
modernization. The modernization phase of formulating an appropri-
ate operational plan and water control strategy, in which deliberate
choices are made on the water allocation and scheduling principles to
be adopted, is a crucial phase that requires special multidisciplinary
skills. Apart from a sound and up-to-date knowledge of hydraulic
control concepts and technology, it also requires management and
institutional skills. This section summarizes some of the points
discussed earlier and proposes some guiding principles for selecting
control strategy and control equipment.

Infrastructure versus management inputs: It has been argued that
a certain amount of substitution may exist between staffing
requirements and hydraulic control, depending on the type of service
that must be provided with a given hydraulic infrastructure. Mutua
(2001) recognizes that the ability to substitute hardware for
management inputs can only take place within certain limits. As
mentioned earlier, the type of infrastructure may have inherent
physical limitations in the way it can be operated.


125
The trade-off between infrastructure investment and management to
meet a certain level of service is based on the assumption that that
level has been defined as part of a comprehensive strategic plan for
the agency. It is founded on the principle that a training programme
will be in place to support the strategies designed to achieve the
strategic goals and guarantee that the staff will acquire the appropri-
ate skills to operate and maintain the types of infrastructure chosen
for flow control (Malano).

Step-by-step versus full-fledged modernization: Some moderni-
zation projects aim at perfect post-project operations that require
huge behavioural changes from both agency personnel and water
associations. Other specialists argue that the modernization of
existing schemes can and in practice should be more often a phased,
step-by-step process, in which better operational management (both
in efficiency as in service rendered) is achieved in a series of
concrete steps of incremental water control and changes in water
scheduling. A step-by-step approach might often prove the only
feasible option in difficult contexts where the options to come on the
desirable operational plan and water control strategy are limited by
an institutional resistance to change by the irrigation agency and/or
institutional reforms where newly created water user associations and
federations have to take up operational tasks for which they have had
little experience. The dilemma of irrigation development will always
remain to strike the right balance between the operational capacity of
the prevailing management institutions and the technological and
hydraulic configuration of the system. A proper and successful irri-
gation modernization programme will thus strive to reach a coordi-
nated and congruent development of both the institutional capacity
and the technology. In order to achieve this, it is imperative that the
first phase of defining an agreed-upon operational plan and water
control strategy be conducted with utmost care and consideration.
(Personal communication from G. van Halsema)

Experts from the Bureau of Reclamation (Stringam) who stated that
canal control systems should be designed with operations and
operators in mind also share these views. Operating personnel must
be comfortable with any changes. This objective is attained by

126
tailoring the control system to the needs and understanding of
operators and by following an evolutionary installation procedure.
Great care should be taken to match equipment and control software
to the needs, understanding and management practices of the project
operators. Designers will be further ahead if they begin with a simple
system. To support these views, these experts from the Bureau of
Reclamation note that managers and governing boards of user
associations at many irrigation projects hesitate to adopt high-tech
control systems because of bad experience and sometimes lack of
understanding. In some cases, unfavourable experiences have
resulted because designers have not been sensitive to the needs of
understanding and experience of canal operating personnel. Control
systems were designed and installed without adequate instructions to
the operators, and the systems did not perform well because
operators did not understand how to use them. On these projects,
managers may view automatic controls as a waste of time and
money, and they will be hesitant to allow any future automation
development.

This paper does not challenge the views that the modernization of
existing systems should be an evolutionary process. This is particu-
larly valid if modernization plans are aiming at the adoption of
technologies that have been developed during the last three decades
in parallel with the development of electronics, such as high-tech
sensors, telecommunications, supervisory control, computers and
flow simulation models and automated controllers. However, some
improvements can be achieved with simple one-time modifications
of the hydraulic infrastructure, such as the construction of long-
crested weir sections at gated cross regulators, flow limiters,
compensation reservoirs and interceptor canals, the conversion of
surface systems to pressurized pipe systems, and possibly the
installation of modular distributors, if the hydraulic conditions of
installation and quality of construction are appropriate. All these
techniques have been used in a number of countries and quickly
understood by the operators and farmers. The rate of implementation
of these technical improvements is often limited by financial
resources, not by the management capability of the operators.
Wherever some of these new structures, such as long-crested weirs,

127
have been installed, farmers have expressed their appreciation by
requesting additional structures. Obviously the irrigation projects
built on wrong design, such as those using the wrong combination of
overflow and underflow structures, should be modified as fast as
possible.

An important conclusion from this discussion is the crucial
importance to have global strategic planning for modernization from
the beginning, whether the modernization is incremental or not.

The role of water users associations in the modernization
process

In general, only large well-established water user associations have
the staff and resources to conceptualize modernization plans. The
role of small associations is inevitably limited to the definition of the
type of service they need from the water provider, either a
government agency or a higher level of farmer association. Generally
the members of small associations do not have a concept of
modernization and are primarily concerned about just having reliable
and equitable service. Farmers who are struggling with their present-
day problems cannot have a vision of what is needed to support their
future needs. The interest and (partial) funding for modernization
will have to come first from government organizations, which will
have to stimulate the interest of large associations. Even in the
United States, although the irrigation districts have been managed by
user associations for decades, modernization is still a relatively new
concept. It may take considerable time and efforts to have water user
associations in developing countries very active in modernization
conceptually and financially. The creation of a national federation of
water user associations, as in Colombia and Mexico, may accelerate
the process.

Financing of rehabilitation programmes: a few examples

In practice, the financing of rehabilitation programmes may be the
determinant factor in the rate of implementation. The irrigation
districts in Alberta, Canada, have benefited since 1969 from cost-

128
sharing rehabilitation programmes which have allowed that province
to develop a world-class water distribution system.

Box 10: The irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation programme in
Alberta, Canada

Since 1969, the government of Alberta and the thirteen irrigation districts
have participated in a unique cost-sharing programme to rehabilitate the
irrigation delivery infrastructure. Each district is independently operated
by the farmers who elect a board of directors and hire staff to operate and
maintain the district. The cost share ratio has changed from an initial
86/14 to the present 75/25. The original ratio resulted from a study which
concluded that the irrigation farmers receive 14 percent of the benefits
and the other 86 percent go to other areas of the economy.

Prior to 1995, rehabilitation programmes were for five-year periods with
no assurance that they would be renewed. With no guarantee of funding,
efforts were concentrated on worst stops rather than on rehabilitation in a
planned fashion. Over US$400 million have been allocated to cost-sharing
programmes so far. The early rehabilitation projects consisted mainly in
rebuilding canal banks and replacing critical control structures. The
standards used for rehabilitation were progressively improved. Pipelines
have replaced canal lining as the preferred choice of rehabilitation.

To overcome the limitations of undershot gates for upstream water level
control, two overshot gates were developed in Alberta: the drop-leaf gate,
which consists of a flat panel hinged on the bottom of the canal, and the
Langemann gate, an improvement of the drop-leaf gate using two hinges
with the upper one travelling in a vertical direction.

Remote control and automation were introduced in the 1980s and are now
an integral part of irrigation rehabilitation in Alberta, including pump
control, upstream level control, and SCADA. Programmable logic
controllers are used for irrigation control as well as data loggers,
ultrasonic-level transmitters and differential pressure transducers. The
dependable and efficient water delivery infrastructure in Alberta has
benefited not only the primary producers but also the economy of the
province. (Ring)

As a rule, irrigation districts in the western United States have to use
their own financial resources to modernize their irrigation systems.
In some cases, however, modernization is financed by other organi-
zations, which have direct interest in water saving programmes. For

129
example, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
currently finances a huge modernization of the Imperial Irrigation
district. Modernization of the Grand Junction district is financed by
fish interest groups. No doubt the irrigation districts in the United
States are very cautious about the pace of modernization and the
adoption of sophisticated and costly equipment. In most countries,
modernization works are financed by the government, with a very
modest contribution by the farmers. This is the case of the Mula
irrigation scheme in Spain. The century-old canal infrastructure was
replaced by pressurized systems. The innovative management
initiative associated with the physical modernization is the creation
of an individual water account.

A modernization by substitution of the 5 500-ha Lugan Sur project in
the province of Mendoza, Argentina, is under consideration. Even
the main canal will be replaced because of the relocation of the
intake on the Mendoza River. Although the project is designed to
boost high-quality wine export, there is no clear decision on the
contribution of the users to this project, which costs about US$3 000
per hectare, excluding on-farm water-saving techniques.

There are very few cases in developing countries where the farmers
have been involved in the planning, design and financing of
modernization of their irrigation infrastructure. The business-
oriented water user associations in Mexico have progressively
matured since their creation about ten years ago. Their first efforts
for improving performance were concentrated on acquisition of
office equipment and special light maintenance equipment. Efforts to
improve the delivery infrastructure were slow until 1997 when an
agreement on a 50/50 cost-sharing programme was signed between
the National Water Commission (CNA) and ANUR, the national
association of irrigation water users. Modernization activities consist
in the substitution of canals by low-pressure pipelines at secondary
and farm levels, construction of long-crested weirs in secondary
canals, subsurface drainage, agro-meteorological equipment, broad-
crested weirs and electronic flow meters. Efforts to install automatic
controls in canals have failed for a number of reasons, including the
use of tailor equipment.

130
Box 11: Modernization of the mula traditional irrigation system, Spain

The traditional basin mula irrigation system in the semi-arid region in
south-eastern Spain dates back to the 10
th
century. The average annual
rainfall is 280 mm. Until a few years ago, the system was characterized by
a deteriorated irrigation network causing high water losses, rudimentary
methods to control water volumes resulting in excessive power
consumption, and excessive land parcelling with 68 percent of the fields of
less than one hectare.

The regulation of flows was achieved with the construction of nine
terminal interconnected reservoirs, with a total capacity of 500 000 m
3

distributed to supply water for localized irrigation without additional
pressure. The whole operation of the irrigation network (valves, pumps,
gates, filter stations) is centrally controlled from the Office of the
Irrigators Association. Another computer is used to manage the database
information on water deliveries, water pricing, water accounts and
irrigation management.

An innovative management tool is the creation of an individual farmer
water account, similar to a savings account, in which every detail
regarding the annual water allocation of each farmer is recorded. Each
farmer can verify his water consumption and how his installation is working
through a water teller similar to automatic bank tellers. Each user can also
programme irrigation opening or closing in his fields according to his own
criteria or to the programmes developed by an irrigation advisory service.
He can also suspend the irrigation programme at any time.

The benefits of the modernization of the mula project include: a
substantial reduction of water losses in the distribution network; a further
reduction of water losses for farmers using micro-irrigation, against those
still using traditional irrigation methods; energy savings; and significant
increases in crop productivity.

The modernization of the mula project designed as a pilot operation is now
a model in Spain demonstrating the possibilities of transforming a
traditional irrigation system into a modern micro-irrigation installation,
computerized, with efficient management and a level of automation
adapted to the needs of the local communities.

The works were financed with public funds and a small contribution from
the farmers to automatic filtration. The mula user association was involved
in the modernization plan and the arrangements with individual
landowners for the expropriation of land for construction of new works.


131
SPECIFIC DESIGN ISSUES

Two specific design issues that are neglected during the design of
irrigation projects are discussed here because of their important
effect on the performance of irrigation projects.

Hierarchy of canals

The layout of the canal network should be designed so as to be
integrated with not only the roads and drainage system but also
multilevel management, whether from an agency or user
associations.

Figure 9 An irrigation project with a well-established hierarchy of
canals
Note: The setting-up of a multi-tiered organization of water user
associations, combined or not with higher level management by an
irrigation agency, will naturally be derived from the layout of the canals

In many existing schemes in South Asia, the hierarchy of canals is
not adequate for the creation of multi-tiered user associations. As
much as 40 percent of the irrigable area in some projects is served
through direct outlets from the branch distributary and even the main

132
canals. It is unlikely that a water user association consisting of user
groups with individual points of supply would be very active since
the groups have little common interest. The construction of a new
canal parallel to the parent canal and serving all the direct outlets
may be a technical solution to correct the deficiencies of the original
layout in relation to the social and managerial aspects. However, the
farmers served by direct outlets may strongly object to that solution
which would deprive them of their privileged situation.

Figure 10 A typical irrigation system with a loose hierarchy of
canals and a high proportion of direct outlets
Note: The figure shows several options for the creation of water user
associations above the 50-150 ha block level

If management of the system is divided between units, the interface
should be located preferably at hydraulic breakdowns, such as
reservoirs. This principle is widely applied in mid and southern
China, where most systems consist of a large reservoir connected to
many medium-sized and small reservoirs supplying thousands of
village and farm reservoirs.



133
Figure 11 Typical configuration of an irrigation project in mid and
southern China (known as melon on the vine)
Note: Medium-sized and small reservoirs are natural interfaces between
different levels of management: province, counties and villages

Control of seepage losses

Seepage losses from canal irrigation systems may reduce substan-
tially the volumes of water to be delivered at farm level. The losses
from the field channels in the large alluvial plains of Asia are
reported to account for about 40 percent of the volumes of water
supplied to these channels.

Lining of irrigation canals is a very costly exercise and may increase
the total cost of a project by 30 to 40 percent compared to the cost of
an unlined system. The decision whether or not to line irrigation
canals on the basis of economic considerations should therefore be a
very important part of the design process. It is puzzling that not
much thought has been given by designers to the robustness of the
conventional rigid lining techniques routinely adopted during design.
Most disturbing is the doubt about the actual amount of water saved
by canal lining despite considerable investments for canal lining and

134
the ambitious rehabilitation programmes in many countries. The
reduction of seepage losses is generally assumed to be constant for
the expected life of a project to have a chance of achieving a
favourable economic return, an assumption generally unrealistic.
Projects with extensively cracked concrete lining abound throughout
the world. The effectiveness of these linings to reduce seepage losses
is very low. Even lining with still good appearance may not be an
effective seepage barrier because the small cracks or deficient joints
form water flow paths to the entire canal prism, which considerably
reduce the effectiveness of the lining. Saturation of the soils after
commissioning of a canal causes some settlement of the soil mass
resulting in wide gaps underneath the slabs. The rigid slabs
eventually rest on a limited number of supports resulting in further
cracks. The gaps provide opportunities for seepage loss under most
of the lining.

The use of rigid materials (cast-in-situ concrete, pre-cast concrete
panels or bricks) is still the most common technique of canal lining
in developing countries. The causes of the ineffectiveness of rigid
canal lining are linked to the poor quality of construction,
particularly the compaction of the sub-base and the placing of
concrete, and to the inadequate operation of the canals with too rapid
drawdown and frequent dewatering. The adoption of design stan-
dards of irrigation agencies from some developed countries recom-
mending thin concrete lining, which is adequate in case of high
standards of construction using modern canal lining machinery and
of strict respect of operation rules, is also the cause of the problem.
Designers should consider the difficulty of canal lining in humid
conditions, using rustic methods of concrete placing. Increasing the
thickness of canal lining by about 30 percent may be a realistic but
costly solution.

Another option is to adopt the use of flexible geo-membranes
protected with a rigid lining or with loose materials. This technique
was used first in Bureau of Reclamation projects and in some
projects in the Middle East with very difficult soils or gypsum soils.
If geo-membranes consist of stable long-lasting material and are well
installed, seepage rates from canals are negligible. Despite the

135
accumulated evidence of the short life of the conventional lining
techniques in many projects, adoption of geo-membranes in
irrigation canal lining is still very slow. The Fordwah-Sadiqia project
in Pakistan and the Tarim project in western China are two
remarkable exceptions. The former included a very intensive
research component on estimation of canal seepage losses before and
after lining and an evaluation of different construction techniques.
The latter, involving the lining of over 400 kilometres of canals, with
the use of over 5 million m
2
of geo-membranes, is the largest
construction work ever using that technique.

A managerial option to reduce seepage losses is to operate the canals
by turns, and to close them during the low season. That management
approach has obvious disadvantages for the irrigators.

The economic considerations on the issue of capital investments
versus maintenance costs and the short life of low capital invest-
ments discussed above are particularly valid for canal lining. Before
deciding on a costly lining programme, it is important to use realistic
values for the reduction of seepage rates, life of lining and
maintenance costs. A comparative evaluation of earlier lining pro-
grammes in the same region should be carefully evaluated through
intensive measurement of seepage losses of unlined and lined canals
several years after construction.


XIII. A PROCESS FOR REVISING DESIGN PROCEDURES
AND STANDARDS

Assessing the need for changes: the use of internal indicators

Very few developing countries have adopted the full spectrum of
modern irrigation concepts and standards. In a few cases, the design
makes use of the most advanced technology for water control but the
water distribution strategy lacks the flexibility required for a service-
oriented delivery (for example in Jordan and Morocco). In other
cases, the technology is inadequate to satisfy the stated objective of
modern irrigation. This is the case of the fully gated, manually

136
operated systems, which were designed to meet the irrigation
requirements but are far too complicated or too costly to operate,
especially during the wet season and in the humid tropics. Many
examples are found throughout the world. More frequently, neither
the technology nor the strategy meets the definition of modern
design. That category includes the projects with faulty designs, and
operational procedures designed for the convenience of the
operators, not of the users.

Most countries would have to assess the needs for changing their
approaches to irrigation development. It would be useful to develop a
kind of checklist to assist irrigation agencies in this diagnosis with
questions falling under the two standard categories:
Are we doing the right thing?
Are we doing the thing right?

Questions to be addressed could include:
Realism of original assumptions for the design of existing
schemes
Changes in water demand
Layout of the farms: direct access of each farm to irrigation
and drainage farm
Reliability and flexibility of the service provided
Is irrigation scheduling imposed by the agency or based on
arranged demand?
Days for advance request
Can water be shut without notice? Possibility of flow rate
changes
Possible options of on-farm water application for the farmers
Hierarchy of canals
Compatibility of the layout of the canal system with the
organization of multi-tiered user associations with well-
defined hydraulic boundaries
Water measurement at each level of management
Degree of independence of operation at each level (reservoirs
or other means)

137
Frequency of changes in settings of devices required to meet
set targets such as water levels or flows
Sensitivity of the control structures used for cross regulators
and off-takes
Simplicity of operation of the control devices
Interaction between control structures and hydraulic stability
Feasibility of volumetric water pricing (robustness of
volumetric devices, stability of flow conditions)
Feasibility of water trading at different levels
Quality assurance of construction
Capability of maintenance of sophisticated equipment (tele-
metry, remote control and monitoring)

All these questions were considered in the 1996 World Bank
research study on performance of 16 irrigation projects. These 16
projects had some elements of modernization, and represented a
variety of design concepts, climates, crops and water supply
conditions. That study broke new grounds in project evaluation by
developing a new framework for assessing systematically the internal
process of irrigation projects. The research includes two features: a
rapid appraisal process, and the development of a number of internal
indicators. The internal indices provide a systematic rating of hard-
ware, management and service throughout the entire system. Internal
indicators examine the mechanism of water control and allocation at
all levels of the project. The complete picture enables the evaluator
to visualize where changes are needed, and what impact the changes
would have at various levels. That approach was developed to
answer the question: what specific actions need to be taken so that
benefits can justify the investment in rehabilitation and moderni-
zation?
20
None of the external indicators which compare inputs and
outputs of irrigation projects provides specific information on what
needs to be corrected to improve performance. They do not provide

20
The field questionnaire, the list of internal and external indicators, the
data on the 16 evaluated projects and the findings of the research study are
available in the FAO water report No 19. This report is available on the
Internet at http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/oldocsw.jsp as a PDF document
<ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/aglw/docs/wr19.pdf>

138
insight regarding the working of the internal mechanisms within an
irrigation project, be it management, social or hardware.

The internal indicators provide a new evaluation tool. They can serve
as a valuable training and diagnostic tool for modifying the internal
hardware and operation of irrigation projects (Burt).

The rapid appraisal process developed for that research differs
substantially from the walk-through techniques with farmer
representatives that aim at the identification of the worst spots such
as poorly located or badly damaged farm outlets.

Development of new design procedures

In the preparation of new design procedures and standards, an
important distinction is to be made between the design of new
projects and the rehabilitation and modernization of existing ones.
The modernization of existing projects is a complex compromising
process between the objective of making use of existing facilities and
minimizing the costs on one side and the objective of improving
performance and changing the quality of service on the other. The
solution adopted will depend on the potential productivity of the
project and on the government policy on the development of water
resources. Development of a modernization plan requires an assess-
ment of the service currently provided by the system, the impact of
the current service on farmer irrigation management and the potential
benefit that would result from improved service. Successful moderni-
zation requires the adoption of a service attitude, as well as compre-
hensive strategies for design and operation of water distribution
facilities at all levels of a project.

A number of technical documents have been published during the
last decade to stimulate and promote the development and applica-
tion of modernization to irrigation projects, be they new projects
under design or projects under operation. Three documents that are

139
intended to serve as guidelines to owners, designers, operators and
users are of particular interest
21
:
The ICID publication on automation of irrigation systems,
which deals with the concepts and the various automatic
control logics and describes the different types of equipment,
including passive regulators, hydro-mechanical equipment,
local automatic controllers and hardware for remote
monitoring and control.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Manual on canal system
automation also deals with the control fundamentals, methods
and algorithms. The automatic control of irrigation systems in
the United States is based on the development of the electron-
ic industry, which includes the use of electronic components,
usually consisting of microprocessor-type equipment (micro-
computers and software, keyboards, digital displays, master
stations and control centres) and communication equipment.
The publication of the IHE in the Netherlands on flow control
in irrigation systems discusses in detail the various delivery
strategies and canal control systems, canal capacities, and
other hydraulic structures such as stilling basins, drops and
chutes.

Revision of design standards

Most irrigation agencies should proceed with a diagnosis of the
concepts and design standards of existing projects and of their
current standards to assess whether they could meet the requirements
of present and future operation and maintenance given the forces of
change that will affect the irrigated sector. To meet the conditions of
the future, water delivery from irrigation projects should be more

21
The FAO paper No 26 (1975) provides detailed information on hydraulic
and structural calculation of the structures found in the design manuals of
about a dozen countries. This document provides little guidance, however,
on the selection of structures, their advantages and disadvantages and their
effects on each other. Automatic controllers and remote control and
monitoring are not discussed or are outdated.


140
flexible and reliable. Operation rules should be transparent and
understood by the users. Volumetric measurement of water is a
prerequisite to the establishment of water rights, water trading and
water charges. Potential benefits should be attractive enough to the
users to be able to recover at least the sustainable costs of irrigation,
which include operation, maintenance and replacement costs. These
objectives cannot be met without modern management of irrigation
projects, including automation. Automation has the potential to yield
agricultural benefits as well as environmental benefits: increased
delivery flexibility and dependability will benefit farmers and canal
operators while better management will reduce water waste and the
deterioration of quality of water flowing to the drains and aquifers.
Of greater priority are:
The countries using water control strategy and equipment that
are well known for their difficulty of operation in field
conditions and their inefficiency, such as the manually
adjustable gated systems and those designed for operating at
full supply. The manual from the Bureau of Reclamation
referred to above states that the operation of irrigation
systems under conventional design is costly and inefficient.
Even under continuous vigilance by operating personnel, the
latter cannot eliminate undesirable variations in water levels,
which adversely affect the water delivery rate and schedule.
The countries using designs that are faulty from an engineer-
ing viewpoint, such as the wrong combination of control
structures which amplify the variations in supply.

Strategies for dissemination

Revision of FAO guidelines: The 1996 FAO guidelines for the
preparation of irrigation projects should be revised to provide better
guidance on the questions of water delivery strategy, selection of
control strategy and control equipment. Some chapters of this
document should be incorporated in these guidelines.

Building up national capacity on irrigation modernization through
workshops, seminars and training programmes: These programmes

141
could use extensively the tools and findings of the World Bank
research study (FAO Water Report No 19) referred to above. This
innovative approach to modernization training has been successfully
tested in Thailand and provides quick changes in the thinking of
trained irrigation engineers. The complete picture provided by the
evaluation of internal and external indicators enables the participants
to visualize the deficiencies of the present systems and the type of
changes that are needed.

Training of water users associations: Simple training materials
should be prepared for dissemination to the boards of directors of
user associations and their technical management staff. The difficulty
of operating a project 24 hours a day seven days a week under
manual control should be highlighted. The objective of moderniza-
tion should be clearly stated in terms of cost saving, better use of
labour force, more efficient and flexible service to the users and
overall increased productivity. The possibility of incremental
modernization should be emphasized. The active participation of the
users in the design and their provision of a consistent level of
funding are two ingredients for the sustainability of the moderniza-
tion of existing systems.


XIV. CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR COUNTRY
IRRIGATION POLICIES

The need to improve the performance of large-scale irrigation is
compelling. Easy, low-cost solutions to mobilize additional resources
and improve the quality of service, such as the development of
groundwater resources underlying canal irrigation systems, have
nearly reached their limits in many arid and semi-arid areas.
Furthermore, these solutions are not sustainable when they lead to
overexploitation of the groundwater resources. There is no choice but
to modernize existing systems to provide the level of service required
for reaching the level of productivity needed to meet the food
production goals of the 2020s.


142
Few irrigation systems in developing countries and even in
developed countries meet all the characteristics of service-oriented
modern irrigation. The financial resources required are considerable.
However, the main constraints to modernization may be the still
widespread denial of the importance of technology in irrigation
performance, the strong resistance to change of the irrigation
community and the limited expertise available to promote and apply
modern concepts and design of irrigation systems. These obstacles
would not be overcome without recognition of the importance of
technology in the performance of irrigation projects by all
international and national organizations involved in the development
of water resources (GWP, IWMI, IRRI, IFPRI, ICID, FAO and
development banks) and the internalization of modern design
concepts in water resource development/irrigation policies of donor
agencies.

The new CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water in Agriculture and
the dialogue consisting of the dialogue on water, food and the
environment and of a comprehensive assessment of water manage-
ment in agriculture, which would coordinate the efforts of all
stakeholders, including farmers organizations, may be an opportunity
to achieve the above two objectives.

The water resource development policy papers prepared by the
World Bank and other financing institutions which do not address the
specific issues of irrigated agriculture should be supplemented by a
long-overdue irrigation policy. Although it is beyond the scope of
this paper to provide an exhaustive list of the points to be addressed,
the following issues relevant to the performance and sustainability of
irrigation projects should be examined:

Objectives of irrigation: Donors should avoid supporting irrigation
policies that have conflicting objectives. The objective of sustainabi-
lity may not be compatible with the policy of benefiting the
maximum number of farmers through extensive irrigation. If this
were the case, the level of subsidies should be clearly established.


143
Economic evaluation: The method for the economic evaluation of
irrigation projects, which have largely contributed to under-design
and to the notorious over-optimism of evaluation of irrigation
projects, should be reconsidered. This document proposes to use the
same economic method as the one used for other infrastructure or
service projects. As for the water supply where projects are evaluated
on the value of the water sales, independently of the final use of
water, irrigation projects should be evaluated on the sales of water
sold for irrigation purposes, at a price acceptable to the users. This
approach, revolutionary in the econometrics of rural development
projects, would have several advantages. It would break the vicious
tradition of designers from consulting firms or governments of
under-designing in order to reduce costs and overestimating the
irrigation benefits, including the cropping intensities, yields of crops
and projected prices of agricultural commodities.

The present use of the economic rate of return for the evaluation of
irrigation projects is in favour of low capital and high maintenance
cost projects, an unrealistic approach in most countries. Further
attention should be given to the life of the infrastructure and
sustainability of irrigation projects. It was bad service to borrowing
countries to finance the lining of irrigation canals that have little or
no effect on seepage losses less than ten years after installation.

Revision of design concepts: The strong link between the irrigation
technology and the performance of irrigation projects and the need
for the revision of design standards and operational procedures to
respond to the forces of change should be recognized. There is no
other infrastructure sector that has given so little attention to the
needs of the final users of water in terms of flexibility and reliability.
Many systems have been sized for the average irrigation require-
ments of a predetermined cropping pattern without any provisions
for change in crops, deviations from average rainfall, the reluctance
of farmers to irrigate at night, and special requirements such as land
preparation of paddy fields. No other infrastructure sector has given
so little attention to the ease of management by the field operators.


144
Relation between physical improvements and institutional
reforms: The role of the user associations in the modernization
process of irrigation projects should be recognized. Any strategy for
improving performance of the irrigation sector should consider the
relationship that exists between the design and functions of user
associations and the plans for a better level of service. Physical and
organizational improvements are not isolated actions but part of a
well-planned process.

Relation between policy reforms and technology: Finally, the
irrigation policies should emphasize that policy reforms cannot be
implemented without an appropriate physical environment. Public
investments may be required to improve irrigation systems to
provide better control and measurement of water delivery before
volumetric pricing, the establishment of water rights and trade of
these rights can be implemented. On the other hand, public policies
may have to be implemented while modernizing large-scale
irrigation systems, to encourage improvement in farm-level water
management and to enhance agricultural productivity.

In many projects, the farmers have pointed out the need for a new
approach by looking for other short-term sources of water, which are
not necessarily environmentally sound. It is a challenge to the
irrigation profession to respond to their signals.
145
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149
ANNEX I

PLANNING A LARGE IRRIGATION PROJECT IN THE PERIOD 1950-70

This annex draws heavily on a paper prepared by two
engineers from the Bureau of Reclamation published in
the 1955 U.S. Yearbook of Agriculture. This paper
presents the approach to planning of large irrigation
projects in the 1950s. The Bureau of Reclamation has
considerably influenced the planning process adopted by
lending agencies. The focus was on the classical
engineering studies, land classification and the capacity
of the farmers to pay.

A large-scale irrigation development is a substantial undertaking that
requires investigation, planning and progress in accordance with a defined
course of action. It is interwoven with economic, social, legal, political
and interregional and international problems.

The reconnaissance stage, the first stage of planning, involves a short
review of all major engineering, land and water problems to determine
whether a more detailed investigation is warranted. Planning during the
feasibility stage, the second stage, should be detailed and conclusive in
the formulation of plans for the irrigation project, recognizing that the
plan proposed now may be subject to change when the irrigation project is
being constructed.

Studies have to be made of groundwater possibilities since large projects
often combine the use of surface and groundwater to provide the full
requirements. Quality of water must be determined. Flood flows require
special consideration: structures must be designed with adequate spillways
to accommodate these floods.

The feasibility of an irrigation project depends on continued productive
ability of the lands. Detailed description of land classification studies is
provided. If the water supply is the limiting factor, the arable land
classification data and the underlying surveys are used as the basis for
selecting the locations of the irrigable lands to be included in the project.

The application of engineering skills and judgment is essential to the
design and construction of works to deliver irrigation water to the land in
controlled and adequate amounts for crop use. In that, the important steps
are engineering surveys and explorations, including geological interpreta-
tions, preparation of preliminary designs and cost estimates, and the
determination of annual operation, maintenance and replacement costs.

150
During the preparation of feasibility designs, studies are made to deter-
mine the structures best suited to the conditions encountered. Engineering
economics is important: the engineer must design a structure for the job
the most economical in first cost and in annual cost of operation,
maintenance and replacement.

To make a reasonable estimate of the annual operation, maintenance and
replacement cost, the project plan must be crystallized, extensive
operation on each important structure must be available and the farm
layout must be determined. With such data available, an organization
necessary for the operation and maintenance can be planned, equipment
requirements estimated, materials and supplies needed for operation and
maintenance determined and the probable life of structures calculated.

Repayment studies are made to determine payment capacity of the water
users and to make recommendations for repayment of construction costs
allocated to irrigation. Determination of payment capacity is accomplished
by an extensive study of the agricultural expectancies of the project area
without the proposed development in comparison with conditions assumed
to exist under the proposed development. The main tool of the study is the
farm budget analysis.

Project development may be further justified by a comparison of the net
benefits resulting from construction of the project with all anticipated
costs of bringing about these benefits. The ratio of all net benefits to costs
in excess of unity will indicate the desirability of the development.

Finally arrangements have to be made for financing if the project has been
found feasible.

Sometimes the farmers are not familiar with the problems connected with
irrigation farming, the need for the preparation of land to receive
irrigation water, and the controlled application of water for best results.
They may need help which can be made available through different
agencies.

151
ANNEX II

ABSTRACTS FROM THE FAO GUIDELINES FOR PLANNING IRRIGATION AND
DRAINAGE INVESTMENT PROJECTS

This annex reproduces the sections from the FAO
Investment Centre Technical Paper No 11 which are
dealing with water management and operation of
irrigation and drainage systems.

Part I: Recent lessons and implications for planning

Choice of technology (page 29)

Commonsense dictates that the choice of a technology for irrigation should
be based on its appropriateness for the cropping patterns intended and
should also consider cost-effectiveness. In the past, irrigation engineers
have tended to overlook an additional need: for the technology also to be
matched to the level of sophistication of the operational capacity of the
users. It has become increasingly obvious that the design process must
start from a consideration of how the users will operate the system; this
should be then designed to provide the optimum combination of efficiency
in water use and cost-effective operation and maintenance. Equally
important, the designer must consider how the users will cultivate their
land and the implications that this may have for scheme layout. Thus it
may be that the design which involves the lowest investment cost per
hectare may not be the most cost-effective solution if it also involves a
large number of staffers for its operation or if, because of operational
difficulty, it cannot be used to capacity. On the other hand, a design of
modern water control structures may not result in overall efficiency gains
if the users reject the modern control in favour of their traditional
proportional dividers.

The choice of technology, whether for new development or for the
rehabilitation of existing schemas, has been the subject of much debate
over the years. While most irrigation engineers would now agree that the
starting point for design must be ease of operation, they still tend to
polarize into two camps. One sees the problem largely as overcoming the
hydraulic instability of extensively gated manually operated systems; it
sees the solution as the modernization of these systems, adding automatic
downstream control structures and other feedback mechanisms designed
to achieve hydraulic stability. The other accepts the reality of farmers
damage in wet-season drought and so favours designs based on cruder and
more robust structure; the possibility of just-on-time, demand-based

152
delivery of water to crops is foregone, in the hope of preserving the civil
works from interference.

Part II: The planning process

Activities for planning the preferred option (page 69)

Engineering studies should include: a) for schemes being considered for
rehabilitation and upgrading, a detailed diagnostic operational study to
identify the current condition of the infrastructure, constraints, sources of
inefficiency and the scope for efficiency gains and b) preliminary
engineering designs for the scheme layout, main structures and water
supply focusing particularly on water saving measures and ease of farmer
operation and management, including automatic controls if they are
considered to be an appropriate technology.

Outline of a typical proj ect document: proj ect rationale and
planning considerations (page 131)

The section on design considerations should address questions such as: the
choice of technical strategy and technology to match operation and
maintenance capacity (e.g. upstream versus downstream technology,
automation, etc) and/or traditional water rights and methods of
distribution, e.g. division structures that maintain traditional rights and
farmers operational preferences.

153
ANNEX III

CONVENTIONAL TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR CONSULTING SERVICES FOR
AN IRRIGATION IMPROVEMENT PROJECT

The following are extracts from the terms of reference
for a project approved by a donor agency in 1994. The
terms of reference are limited to conventional
engineering studies. They do not include a diagnosis of
the performance of the existing projects, particularly in
terms of service provided to users. The appraisal report
for this particular project does not indicate the level of
service to be provided under the project; it does not
even include a short discussion on the water control
strategy and equipment. Most recent appraisal reports of
donors limit the discussion on operation and
maintenance of the project to indicating the level of
canals for which the agencies and the farmers are
responsible.

Contracts for each subproject would cover the scope of work for
engineering designs and construction supervision. Services to be provided
for each subproject would include, but not be limited to, assistance in:
a) Collection and analysis of data
b) Preparation of work plans for all subproject components
c) Survey, investigation, design, layout, preparation of specifi-
cations, tender/construction drawings, consultants cost estimate,
and supervision of construction of the irrigation, surface/sub-
surface drainage, and land levelling works
d) Establishment of criteria and procedures for technical work and
construction specifications
e) Preparation of tender documents for civil works and required
equipment
f) Quality control, including performance and/or ranging field and
laboratory tests
g) Setting up monitoring systems for selected physical parameters
and monitoring the physical and financial progress
h) On the job training and guidance of the implementing agencys
assigned staff in materials inspection and construction technique

The main objective of the study for each subproject would be to provide
recommendations on how best to organize water user groups along a
convenient tertiary block service area perimeter, and to strengthen the
functional capability of exiting water user groups.


154

ANNEX IV

IRRIGATION POLICY: MODERNIZATION OF WATER RESOURCES IN BRAZIL

This annex provides extracts from a policy note on
irrigation modernization in Brazil, which is a good model
of a new policy incorporating the principles developed in
this document. Brazil is among the most advanced
countries in Latin America in adopting modern irrigation
technology. With some 65 percent of all irrigation under
some form of aspersion, it is significantly ahead of most
countries. In addition, technology use is highly diverse.
Nearly all existing technologies are under use in some
form or another. The paper recognizes that water user
associations are only one type of private-sector
participation. It also recommends the adoption of more
efficient technologies to respond to the increasing
demand for water for other sectors.

Irrigation has a crucial role to play in the transformation of agriculture and
the improvement of economic and social conditions of the world
population. Although the global demand for food is essentially met, hunger
persists mainly because the hungry cannot translate their needs into
demand or because civil disorder disrupts food flows.

Despite these expectations, irrigation expansion has slowed dramatically
since the 1980s. Over the past decade, the worldwide trend has been
towards emphasis on the rehabilitation and management improvement of
existing schemes. The slowdown is probably linked to factors such as: a)
the trend towards economic wide reforms that result in reduced fiscal
resources for irrigation, a sector that has traditionally relied heavily on
public funding; and b) growing adverse publicity related to negative
environmental impact from both the development and abandonment of
irrigation schemes.

There is a danger that countries will become complacent, reduce irrigation
investment to unsustainable levels or abandon it altogether, and thereby
trigger crises for the most vulnerable populations of society.

Irrigation is a case in point. Historically, except for a period of fairly
significant investments and an effort to promote irrigation development in
the 1960s and 1970s, the government of Brazils attention to irrigation has
taken a back seat to other uses, such as power and urban water supply.
The situation persists even today as modernization reforms are focused

155
mainly on the overall economy or, in the case of the water sector, more on
overall water resource management, water supply and hydropower. As a
result, changes needed to modernize the legal, institutional and policy
framework for irrigation are lagging and irrigation development has been
relatively stagnant for over a decade.

Need for irrigation reform

There is an abundant literature on the main issues affecting the irrigation
sector in many countries, often described in the form of a vicious cycle
caused by the lack of maintenance, poor irrigation service, farmer
dissatisfaction, low rates of fee collection, weak irrigation budgets and, as
a result, inadequate maintenance. In an attempt to break this cycle in the
irrigation sector, governments and multilateral organizations have begun
to promote new-style programmes that combine a mix of physical
rehabilitation improvement and management reforms, improved financial
performance and attention to operation and maintenance, stronger
linkages to support services and overall water resources and user
participation.

User participation, in particular, has drawn a lot of attention, in part
because it enables public agencies to get out of a business where they
have generally been inefficient. In this case the more conventional
approach tends to focus on creating and building private water user
associations or similar organizations that can take over irrigation
management from public agencies. A less conventional view takes a more
comprehensive approach, seeking to involve a variety of private-sector
participants not only in irrigation management but also in financing and
construction of such schemes, as well as multipurpose projects. In this
case, water user associations represent only one type of private
participation. Others include corporations (full-service irrigation com-
panies, consulting firms, contracting firms), NGOs and the general public.
This unconventional approach is particularly appealing because not only
does it potentially minimize the inherent problems of public management
but it also provides significant public-sector investment and cost savings.
This is increasingly critical, as the growing investment needs of the
irrigation sector are not likely to be met by public agencies constantly
facing tight fiscal constraints.

Modernization vision

The need and types of irrigation reform seem to be well understood.
However, a comprehensive vision of what the ideal, or modern, irrigation
sector might look like is less certain. Part of the problem is that the
irrigation sector tends to be highly complex, involving and/or affecting

156
numerous other sectors and factors. Irrigation realities and policies vary
substantially across countries.

There are at least seven elements that could be considered as fundamental
for any modern irrigation sector. They are:
Physical irrigation development potential
Strong legal and institutional framework
Active and growing private sector participation
Technological advancement
Supporting economic policies
Adequate support services
Clear linkages to overall water resource management and
environmental policies

Regarding technology

Identifying what is modern (or most advanced) is perhaps straightforward.
It is widely recognized, for example, that micro-irrigation uses water more
efficiently, although it requires more investment and skilled labour than
other types of irrigation technology and is sometimes less practical. It is
clear that technological advancement is critical to sustain irrigation
development over time. Again, in light of significant economic resources
constraints, the cost savings and greater productivity that can be realized
from adoption of such technologies is fundamental. Equally important, the
population growth and rising income factors that may require increased
food production from irrigated lands create conflicts among competing
uses for water (i.e. hydropower, irrigation, water supply, environment,
etc). As such, technologies that improve irrigation water use efficiency,
thereby enabling a reduction in overall water use for irrigation, will be
important in helping to minimize such conflicts.

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