Canal maintenance: a key to restructuring irrigation management

Abstract

Farmers becoming involved in canal mainentance is a recent trend in many government-managed irrigation systems. Before being able to assess the pitfalls and perspectives of this trend, it is necessary to examine in detail the issue of canal maintenance itself, an issue which has received relatively little attention. The paper focuses on canal maintenance in an irrigation system in Western Mexico, and finds that canal maintenance differs in several aspects from water distribution. A first difference is that water distribution often results in competition among water users along the same canal, whereas the need for canal maintenance may bring these people together in cooperation, which may help to forestall possible conflicts over water supply. A second important difference is that water distribution is directly productive, whereas canal maintenance involves the reproduction of the canal system, the (often considerable) costs involved being investments. In the case study reviewed, canal maintenance gave rise to certain relationships between different groups of people, and between them and the canal infrastructure, relationships which may not have been uncovered if only water distribution had been studied. It is argued that interventions aimed at handing over management responsibilities to water users would be more effective if such locally specific expressions of cooperation and initiative of the actors involved are taken as a starting point.