Social Capital and Local Water Management in Egypt

Abstract

From the 1980s onward, billions of dollars were poured into irrigation improvement programs in Egypt. These aimed at improving local Nile water management through the introduction of more water-efficient technology and by placing management of the improved systems in the hands of local water user associations. The central premise of most of these programs was that the functioning of such associations could rely on the revival of traditional forms of social capital—social networks, norms, and trust—for their success. This book shows how the far-reaching social changes wrought at the village level in Egypt through the twentieth century rendered such a premise implausible at best and invalid at worst. The book examines networks of social relationships and their impact on the exercise of social control and the formation of collective action at the local level and their change over time in four villages in the Delta and Fayoum governorates. Outlining three time frames, pre-1952, 1952–73, and 1973 to the present, and moving between multiple actors—farmers, government officials, and donor agencies—the book shows how institutional and technological changes during each period and the social changes that coincided with them yielded mixed successes for the water user associations in respect of water management.

Institutional Performance of Collective Irrigation Systems: A Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis in the Nile Delta of Egypt

“…MWRI involves farmers in the design and establishment of SPS through Water Users' Associations (WUAs) and transfers the management of SPS to WUA members. MWRI's intervention has been driven by its interest to control overpumping associated with IPMs, "improve" local irrigation management, and recover its control over it [22]. Moreover, MWRI has adopted the diffusion of SPSs throughout the country as a national policy to "modernize" irrigation in the Nile Delta and Valley [23].…”

“…The political context also has a vital role in shaping local irrigation institutions [10,34]. Gouda [22] shows how water and agricultural policy changes since the 1950s significantly affect local water management in the Nile Delta. Nonetheless, this study concerns how rules and biophysical and social attributes may affect collective irrigation management (Table 1).…”

Economic and food security benefits associated with raised-bed wheat production in Egypt

“…This reduced irrigation saves costs of pumping water for farmers (a direct benefit through cost-savings), 7 but a larger benefit is increased water availability to farmers at the tail end of the irrigation canals. Irrigation water in the Delta is a rotationbased system where each mesqa 8 receives water in winter for approximately five continuous days and then faces ten days without access to water (Ghazouani et al 2014;Gouda 2016). Farmers at the head of the mesqa normally pump water vigorously and flood their fields as a precautionary measure when it becomes available.…”