Building Blocks for Users’ Participation in Water Governance: Irrigators’ Organizations and State Reforms in Ecuador

Abstract

Participation of water users in Ecuadorian water governance has increased in the last two decades through decentralization, irrigation management transfer policies and efforts of non-governmental organizations and civil society to consolidate water user based multi-levelled organizations. This has resulted in an increased involvement of users in water management decisions at irrigation system, provincial and national levels. This article presents the development of these organizations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and shows how these have formed and important political actor in the left wing government of Rafael Correa since 2007. It shows that a) for the development of water users’ participation in water governance, multi-level user based organiza- tions, that represent the interests of the water users, are needed; and b) that participation in water governance takes place through both formal institutional spaces and more importantly, through informal networking, popular protests, lobbying and negotiations is a contested process in which power differentials are disputed and negotiated