Socioeconomic Issues in Irrigation Literature: Approaches, Concepts, and Meanings

Abstract

Knowledge Assessment on Sustainable Water Resources Management for Irrigation" (KASWARMI) project made evident cases of unsuccessful or non sustainable irrigation experiences that could only be explained by the underestimation of deep socioeconomic issues. This involves not only the social factors related to the implementation/ adoption of new or better technologies by a wide spectrum of users but also the way in which water use and irrigation projects are conceived, planned and implemented by scientists, politicians and practitioners. The project was interested in assessing the social science inputs irrigation specialists receive. With this objective, this paper presents a state of the art on some selected socioeconomic subjects as they appear in the irrigation literature, and analyzes the way in which they are conceived, thought and articulated with the more "technical" factors of irrigation. This should be useful to raise new avenues of research and to enhance articulation of "technical" and social science approaches in quest of a more close to sustainability irrigation practices. A first search covered eight of the most prestigious journals devoted to irrigation subjects. After this search yielded meager results in terms of the amount of papers found, a new search was conducted, without restraining to specific journals but moving freely with a deliberate thematic purpose. The results showed less socioeconomic issues than desirable in the papers within easy reach of irrigation engineers, a meager presence of Latin American cases and an approach to socioeconomic subjects that lack comprehensiveness, as they did not appear to be fully articulated with the technical subjects of irrigation.

Cross-Level Dynamics of Collaboration and Conflict in Multi-Party Systems: An Empirical Investigation Using a Behavioural Simulation

“…Conflict is a pervasive and multifaceted phenomenon in small groups (Jehn 1995), it is contagious and tends to spread among individuals and groups. For example, it has been shown that system-level conflicts around water use are often driven by social and cultural conflicts within stakeholder parties (Montaña et al 2009). We therefore argue that changes in the relational frictions experienced within stakeholder parties tend to influence the conflictuality in the whole multiparty system.…”

Influence of Farmer Capacity Building in Financial Resource Mobilization on Performance of Smallholder Irrigation Projects in Migori County, Kenya

“…Socio-economic factors influence the ability of farmers to utilize opportunities in smallholder irrigation (Omoregbee et al, 2013), and access to credit enables smallholder farmers to purchase farm inputs and to hire labor (Agwu & Edun, 2007). However, while Montaña at al. (2009) stated that failure to consider socioeconomic characteristics of farmers leads to flaws in project conceptualization, planning and implementation, Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO] (2008) stated that despite enormous funds dedicated to agriculture, rural agriculture had continued to perform poorly, and added that there was little to show for the funds spent in smallholder agriculture.…”

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

“…The rapid spread of irrigation pumping technology, disregarding its social dimensions, is likely to have significant adverse implications. Innovations and improvements achieved in the technical aspects of irrigation, without considering the social factors, will not necessarily guarantee successful irrigation experiences (Montaña et al 2009). While the potential solutions to the social side of community-managed irrigation schemes are understood fairly well, the equally critical importance of addressing the social dimensions of private, small-scale irrigation is not well recognized, and the possible solutions are not clear.…”

“…We emphasize the importance of carefully considering the context of user participation in water use. "Participation" is often understood in terms of the actors and stakeholders using water and their involvement in water governance (Montaña et al 2009). It generally implies empowering users to varying degrees to take responsibility for their scheme.…”