PIM and Monitoring

Issues and Opportunities. PIM is about enabling water users to have a greater say in how irrigation services are provided. As such, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are best seen not as separate activities, but as learning processes to be built into the ways in which irrigators are involved in management. M&E activities will be more successful if they are meaningful and useful to irrigators and irrigation managers, not primarily designed to serve the reporting needs of distant donors and program managers, but directly useful to those managing irrigation in the field. Self-assessment. The foundation for meaningful monitoring and evaluation thus lies in processes for self-assessment, by water users and those who provide services to them. Typically these can be planned and reviewed as part of seasonal and annual cycles. Joint walkthroughs, sketch mapping, ranking, and other rapid appraisal techniques provide practical ways to identify problems and possible solutions.

Inclusion and accountability. One of the risks in PIM is that water user association leaders and staff become detached and unaccountable to users, particularly to those who are poorer, less vocal, located in more remote areas or otherwise disadvantaged. Pro-active efforts are needed to ensure that M&E includes those who might otherwise be neglected, tail-enders, women, ethnic minorities, tenant farmers, and others who may not be part of the elites that often dominate leadership positions. While informality, simplicity and local autonomy are generally desirable, procedures are needed by which financial reports, election procedures and other key processes can be examined and challenged. Government agencies and other external actors can often play a significant role in promoting inclusiveness and accountability, and in dealing with cases where abuses are alleged to be occurring.

Keep it simple. A huge array of indicators and methods are available for measuring and analyzing the performance of irrigation systems. However these often depend on specialized expertise and data, sometimes making them hard for ordinary water users and local irrigation leaders to understand. Even where such systems are necessary, as for example in managing water distribution within a large irrigation system, there is a need to look for simple summary indicators, and to include more subjective measures of user satisfaction rather than getting lost in a maze of performance indicators, benchmarks and quantitative detail.

Learning processes. The need to apply learning processes approaches to the design and implementation of irrigation development programs is now generally accepted, rather than assuming that "blueprint" designs can be prepared and then simply implemented with little or no adjustment. However finding the budget to support feedback from the field to program managers and designers is often still difficult. In projects funded by governments and international development banks it may be possible to ensure that budget for M&E is not just expended on conventional surveys, but is used for participatory workshops, detailed observation of pilot initiatives, case studies and other activities that can strengthen learning processes.

Sources for additional information:

1. Guide to Monitoring and Evaluation of Irrigation Management Transfer. Douglas Vermillion. 2000. Japanese Institute for Irrigation and Drainage.
2. Participatory Monitoring of Turnover. 1992. Bryan Bruns
3. The World Bank's Participation and Civic Engagement website has many useful resources and links, with pages on Participatory Toolkits and Manuals and Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation.
4. Participatory Evaluation: Tools For Managing Change In Water And Sanitation. 1993. Deepa Narayan.World Bank Technical Paper 207.
5. Another kind of PIM - Participatory Impact Monitoring.
6. Eldis Guide to Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation
7. IDRC Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation Bibliography for community-based natural resource management.
8. Also see links on the topic page about tools for PIM
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