Is ‘Social Cooperation’ for traditional irrigation, while ‘Technology’ is for motor pump irrigation?

Is ‘Social Cooperation’ for Traditional Irrigation, while ‘Technology’ is for Motor

Pump Irrigation?

Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) Science Workshop

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 9–10 July 2013

Mengistu Dessalegn

OUTLINE

• Introduction• Small-scale irrigation and livelihood• Traditional irrigation

– History, expansion– Social cooperation, collective action

• Motor pump irrigation– History, expansion– Current practices– Consequences

• Conclusions

Introduction

• Increased attention to the importance of irrigation

• Gov. policy endorsing irrigation for agric & food security

• Promotion by development organizations

• Importance of assessing the role and performance of irrigation

• What makes irrigation farming, benefits enduring/ sustainable?

• Focus: technological efficiency & complementary agric inputs

• Little attention to the social aspect of irrigation:

– the presence or absence of social cooperation, institutional conditions & implications

Introduction, ctd

• Sustainable irrigation, social cooperation, institutions

• Disengaging the social aspect of irrigation from the technology:• Practices and implications

• Traditional & motor pump irrigation in Fogera

• Fieldwork-based research in rural Fogera

• Qualitative and participatory methods

Small-scale Irrigation and Livelihood

• Agriculture, livelihood, rainfed farming

• Recent practices of small-scale irrigation

• Integration with local farming practices

• Changing land use practices, intensive cultivation

• Multiple cropping, serving cash and food purposes

Irrigation, ploughing with oxen, photo by author

Irrigated crop, cash value (photo by author)

… Livelihood, ctd

• Local assertions: contributions to farming livelihood• A shift from one season crops to two season crops

• Being able to produce a variety of crops & new crops– (onion, emmer wheat, chickpea, grass pea, tomato, lentils, fenugreek)

• “A farmer who now uses water is a flower.” (Farmer)

• Differential benefits of irrigation:– Landscape variations

• Intensification: gains and losses– differential impacts on local land use practices

Traditional Irrigation: History and Expansion

• Imperial regime: mesno practice existed but limited

• Variations in wider political-ecological contexts

• Limited Imperial, Increased Derg, Expansion Now

• Fogera: wider practice of mesno, turn of this century

• Rainfall uncertainty, growing realization, extension

• Changing perceptions: more value for irrigation

– “Today there is no water that freely goes around the field. If found, she will be diverted.” (Farmers)

Diverted stream (photo by author)

…. Social cooperation & Collective Action

• Traditional irrigation as a social undertaking

• Pooling labor, ideas and commitments together to work on mesno facilities

• river diversion, dam construction and water channels

• water use and irrigation schedule

• Social trust & norms embedded in joint efforts

• Implications for collective action

– “We have equally worked together to bring the water, and we all have to use it equally.” (Farmer)

… Social cooperation & Collective action

• Regulating water usage, use turns, schedules

• Coordination mechanism, water judges, committee

• Avoiding destructive competitions over water use

• Mediating conflicts over water use

• Facilitating the viability of traditional irrigation

• Implications and contributions for long term practices

Motor Pump Irrigation: History, Expansion

• Initial experience, socialist cooperative farming• Recent introduction: < a decade– investors-farmers collaboration

• Expansion in the past 3-4 years, with enabling factors– Access to credit & delivering motor pumps – Share-cropping

• Motor pump incorporated into local share-cropping • Implication for the dissemination and adoption of

agricultural technologies

Current practices of motor pump irrigation

• Focus on the motor-pump technology

• Overlooking the social scheme of irrigation

• Pumping water, individualized household activity

• Ignoring social cooperation beyond household level

• Lack of collective actions for water use, management

• No mechanism of water allocations and irrigation schedules

Motor pump irrigation implements (photo by author)

Current practices of motor pump irrigation,ctd

• Contrasting motor pump with traditional irrigation

• Linking system of water use, management with traditional irrigation in contrast to motor irrigation

• Associating motor irrigation with uninhibited usage– “There is no water use turn with motor irrigation.

Water is used as one wants to use. People stop when the water stops.” (A farmer in Fogera)

Pumping water (photo by author)

… Consequences

• Uncoordinated irrigation practice• Non-regulated water use• Increased competitions for water use • limited duration of water availability• Water shortage• Rivers drying before their regular season

Conclusions

• Small-scale irrigation enhances farming livelihood

• Sustained benefits depend on social cooperation, institutional arrangement to guide water use, manage

• Current motor pump irrigation practices in Fogera – overly focused on the motor pump technology

– disregard the social scheme of irrigation

– undermine the sustainability of its benefits

• Require social coop., institutional mechanisms that coordinate, mediate water use, management across users’ villages

• Collective action for irrigation use and management