POVERTY ERADICATION THROUGH WATER MANAGEMENT: A NEW AGENDA

Changes in the global environment of water management warrant a new analysis of the linkages between irrigation management and poverty. Researchers and policy makers must look beyond participatory irrigation management at how these changes work out for the three major poverty groups—rural and urban food consumers, rural producers, and rural laborers—and what can be done to improve their livelihoods.

Claims that irrigation development improved the well-being of these three poverty groups do have a certain validity. Rapidly expanding, highly subsidized infrastructure development has improved irrigated food production. This, in turn, has lowered and stabilized food prices which was critical for poor consumers of food (who tend to spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food). Those poor food producers whose lands qualified for advantages within command economies or who received allocations of newly-irrigated lands due to government policies have also benefited from new infrastructure and water availability. Intensification of production was especially important for the poor whose land resources are often the limiting factor. The importance that small landholders attached to irrigated agriculture is reflected in their relatively higher irrigated land productivity than their larger farmer counterparts. Poor women and men, who partly depend upon employment which is indirectly related to irrigation, have found ample employment in the process of intensified agriculture, the construction of new infrastructure, and spin-off employment opportunities.

The environment, however, has drastically changed. Subsidies for infrastructure development have been reduced, the most accessible and cheapest water resources have already been developed, and in an increasing number of basins all of the water has been committed. As a consequence, conflicts have often arisen over water. Moreover, irrigation is not particularly favored in the new multisectoral forums in which basin-level water distribution is negotiated. Crop diversification and the cultivation of high value crops are increasingly proposed as a solution for poverty eradication. What is the impact of these changes upon the three poverty groups?

Poor consumers do not consume high value crops which are typically oriented towards the consumption needs of urban elites who possess the highest purchasing power. Thus, impoverished consumers risk being excluded from the benefits of irrigated agriculture.

Profits from these new cropping patterns could benefit poor cultivators, provided cultivators who presently do not have access to infrastructure are granted such access. Newly included cultivators, though, lack the subsidies or state financing that irrigators had in the past for more expensive development of new water resources. Moreover, in the committed basins they will have to bargain with those who fiercely protect the continued exploitation of their earlier investments in infrastructure. A party without even the means to capture water is in a weak position in such negotiations. Thus, poor cultivators who were excluded from access to water in the past, risk to be excluded forever.

In addition, poor cultivators who have already gained some access to infrastructure are probably the ones who will be forced to bear the burden of the necessary water savings in irrigated agriculture. In the past the better-off irrigators were generally favored in terms of access to irrigated land and intra-scheme control over the water, either as owners of equipment or as water service receivers in elite-dominated government schemes. Today, they are more likely to continue to exert their rights and take the water, rather than adopt costly and labor-intensive water saving measures. Moreover, the elite make the best representatives in basin-wide forums to protect the water rights of the schemes as a whole. It is in the direct interest of the poor water users that these negotiations are held and are successful. However, increased dependency upon the elite weaken the bargaining power of poor water users when these representatives deliver water first to their own fields. With a reduced capability to implement their rights the poor will gradually drop out from irrigated agriculture. Thus, under increasing water scarcity, even those poor cultivators who were included in the past will increasingly face exclusion.

The third group, the rural poor who used to find work in irrigation-related occupations, will also suffer economically due to changes in the irrigation sector. They will encounter a decrease in the demand for their employment when agencies stop financing new infrastructure construction or when larger farmers further mechanize irrigated cropping operations (like plowing, weeding and processing), for example. Thus, the benefits from irrigated agriculture that rural laborers had in the past will also diminish.

The above implies that future claims of a positive relationship between irrigation and poverty alleviation, let alone eradication, must be empirically tested and proven. An analysis of the evolving linkages between mainstream irrigation developments and poverty is increasingly necessary in today's changing setting of irrigation reform. One aim of the Gender, Poverty, and Water Project of the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka is to meet that need. The other aim is to develop research-based recommendations for a support system for more inclusive irrigation and better water management. In this support system:

• water needs for multiple purposes of poor women and men are recognized as basic needs,
• at the basin level, water is reserved for priority use by the poor,
• limited development of new water resources is much better targeted at poor women and men than in the past, and
• intra-scheme exclusion of poor women and men is more aggressively countered.

This perspective builds upon empirical lessons learnt from the few replicable inclusive interventions in the past, upon the development of appropriate technology and credit facilities, and upon inclusive elements in local legal arrangements that often exist but tend to be ignored by external agencies. Comparative empirical field research to that end is currently being undertaken in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, and Mexico. We look forward to reporting the findings of these investigations in future newsletters.

References

Douglas Merrey and Shirish Baviskar, Editors. 1998. Gender Analysis and Reform of Irrigation Management: Concepts, Cases, and Gaps in Knowledge. Proceedings of the Workshop on Gender and Water; 15 – 19 September 1997, Habarana, Sri Lanka. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute.

Van Koppen, Barbara. Targeting Irrigation Support to the Poor. International Journal of Water Resources Development. Vol. 15.

The responsibility for the contents of this article rests with the author.

Dr. Barbara Van Koppen
IWMI, Colombo, Sri Lanka
B.VANKOPPEN@cgiar.org