Recent Latin American Developments in Irrigation

Abstract

This paper describes recent developments in the irrigation sector throughout Latin America, with a closer examination of several national cases: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, which together comprise most of the irrigated area in the region. The main developments examined is the process of transfer of operation and maintenance of irrigation schemes to user's organisations and local authorities, and the challenges facing users once governmental responsibility over the systems comes to an end. The main issues arising from the study concern difficulties to develop strong user associations; problems related to the possibility and willingness of users to pay irrigation fees; challenges connected with improving productivity and market access to make the systems profitable and thus allow users to pay for their operation and maintenance; and market failures arising from certain forms of privatisation of water rights.