BARRIERS TO FARMERS’ PARTICIPATION IN ESTABLISHING WATER USER ASSOCIATIONS: THE CASE OF IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE NETWORK OF NORTHEAST AHWAZ, IRAN

Abstract

Concern about water resources in semi-arid areas of the world has led to theintroduction of a participatory management system of water, which potentiallychallenges farmers’ willingness to involvement. Establishing water userassociations has altered the water management system in irrigation and drainagenetworks. Undoubtedly, promoting these changes in rural areas, where the newsocial changes are slowly accepted, is encountered with various obstacles. As such,this study was conducted to recognize the impediments of establishing water userassociations through the eyes of those working in an irrigation and drainagenetwork. Data were collected through a questionnaire which consisted of questionsregarding social, financial, cultural, organizational, management and attitudebarriers. Analysis of data revealed that management barriers were ranked at thefirst place followed by the cultural, attitude and social ones. However, lack ofmotives to stimulate users into participatory system of water management, farmers’inabilities to combat with those who illegally extract water, inability to equal andjustice-based allocation of water to different users, farmers’ preferences to instantindividual advantages instead of future common advantages, negative attitude offarmers toward efficacy of local associations, lack of informative opportunities formaking farmers aware of the WUAs’ benefits were recognized as the strongestbarriers, respectively. The results also showed that there was significantly positivecorrelation among four categories of barriers including social, cultural,management and attitude. This means that they were interrelated and anyintervention to change one could affect the others. Hence, to initiate involvement ofthe local people into decentralized systems of water resources management, salientattempts are needed to empower farmers for removing the barriers, mainlymanagement and social.