Abstract
Participatory irrigation management (PIM) has been broadly promoted by public administrators and donor organizations. The reasons for this push include performance failures of state-controlled irrigation schemes and the need to improve irrigation productivity for meeting rising food demands. A popular reform for increasing participation and ownership is represented by Irrigation Management Transfers (IMTs). IMTs mean replacing the government with the civil society (farmers) in irrigation management, and they go beyond working with the public sector as in PIM. These widely implemented reforms produced mixed experiences. Besides, the evaluation of IMT cases is reliant on scarce quantitative data. IMTs are also difficult to replicate due to methodological issues. However, qualitative research can engage with stakeholders’ perceptions and narratives, especially the most relevant target group, namely farmers. We provide in this study stakeholders’ opinions and attitudes towards several waves of IMT reforms in the Gezira scheme in Sudan. This mega-scheme is of high developmental and socio-cultural importance for the country ever since the independence from the British Empire. Using a perception survey and in-depth interviews with key informants, we illustrate the failure legacies to reform the Gezira scheme by enhancing farmers’ participation through Water User Associations (WUAs). While both farmers and experts have suggested a poor implementation, inadequate farmers’ involvement and unclear objectives of the reforms, the reforms’ recurrent failures are explained within complex historic and political contexts. There are long-standing legacies of development missteps of the Gezira scheme, with no clear and ultimate triggers of performance deterioration. Besides, splits in professional cultures, power imbalances, political instrumentalization (of farmers) and the lack of farmers’ awareness or capacities are salient factors for understanding the poor state of the Gezira scheme. It is difficult for stand-alone irrigation management reforms to be successful. Such reforms need to be embedded within a comprehensive policy package that prioritizes irrigation governance and proposes sound regulations based on clear roles, consensus-making and prior consultation.
Highlights
Irrigation is seen as a solution to meet rising food demands across the world
Technical issues and ultimate triggers of performance deterioration There seems to be a consensus in the perception of key informants that the performance of the Gezira scheme has deteriorated, identifying the start and the reasons of this process is not simple
In the mid-1970s, the scheme witnessed a period of “unattended irrigation” when farmers started to do what they wanted, young people moved away, elderly tenants were not able to run the farm alone, and sharecroppers were hired to do the farming. It was the end of familybased agriculture since “share-croppers had no connection to the land, came from rain-fed agriculture, did not know the Gezira system, and worked only in the morning to open the field outlets pipes (FOPs) [Field Outlet Pipe] and let it run”
Summary
About 20 % of cultivated land under irrigation produce 40 % of the global food output (UNESCO, 2009). Crop yields per hectare and profitability are estimated to be higher than in rain-fed agriculture (Darré et al, 2019; Garces-Restrepo et al, 2007; Lobell et al, 2009; Vico and Porporato, 2011). Irrigation is found to contribute to poverty alleviation, as it makes food more available and affordable for the poor, due to higher productivity and lower risk of crop failure (Hussain and Hanjra, 2004). By consuming a 70 % share of all freshwater withdrawn globally and up to 95 % in developing countries, agriculture is the largest water use sector Seibert et al (2013).
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