The User and the Association: Neglecting Household Irrigation as Neglecting Household Well-Being in the Creation of Water Users’ Associations in the Republic of Tajikistan

Abstract

Development initiatives often cite Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) as fundamental to water governance reform or the broad process of decentralizing responsibilities for management, supply and delivery. But the label of “WUA” indicates little about those who take on these duties as association members, suggesting all who use water in pursuit of life or livelihood are eligible to participate and benefit through collective action. Grounded in the belief that participatory projects can equitably empower and distribute resources, the enthusiastic introduction of WUAs continues despite critique that anticipated outcomes are overstated. Since borders opened to neoliberal development institutions in the 1990s, WUAs have been created throughout post-Soviet Central Asia. Yet, there has been limited reflection on how associations’ design and operation interact with physical or social structures to effect resource access across diverse groups. Drawing on fieldwork in Tajikistan, I demonstrate how WUAs reproduce exclusionary outcomes by requiring members to possess farmland in turn threatening rural food security. Held by a minority, farmland dedicated to commercial production stands in contrast to ubiquitous kitchen gardens, where crops sown for self-consumption form a buffer against hunger in the wake of labor migration and income inconsistency. Households’ inability to become members undermines their claim to water and voice in decision-making, ultimately constraining access to irrigation and a robust harvest.

Re-Theorizing Politics in Water Governance

“…Contextualized using a typology to characterize different modalities of "participation", she argues that demands for "transformative" participation (i.e., implying a transfer of power) following the city's short-lived experience of water privatization have culminated in "nominal" modes of citizen engagement (i.e., reinforcing standing social orders), a process mediated, stalled, and resisted through the "radical" reception of democratization, the fragmentation of social movements, and clientistic relations between state bureaucracies and elites [57]. A second example is MacDonald's [58] critical interrogation of Water Users' Associations (WUAs) as a fundamental mechanism in water governance reform. MacDonald's [58] research in Tajikistan illustrates how WUAs reproduce exclusionary outcomes by requiring members to possess farmland, in turn threatening rural food security and sovereignty for those without such land.…”

“…A second example is MacDonald's [58] critical interrogation of Water Users' Associations (WUAs) as a fundamental mechanism in water governance reform. MacDonald's [58] research in Tajikistan illustrates how WUAs reproduce exclusionary outcomes by requiring members to possess farmland, in turn threatening rural food security and sovereignty for those without such land. As a result, such households remain voiceless within architecture of WUAs, with their kitchen gardens and subsistence crops threatened (among other consequences) [58].…”

“…MacDonald's [58] research in Tajikistan illustrates how WUAs reproduce exclusionary outcomes by requiring members to possess farmland, in turn threatening rural food security and sovereignty for those without such land. As a result, such households remain voiceless within architecture of WUAs, with their kitchen gardens and subsistence crops threatened (among other consequences) [58]. Again, while couched in the language of empowerment and engagement, such research helps underscore the political exclusions and consequences of these processes as they articulate with social contexts.…”

“…Again, while couched in the language of empowerment and engagement, such research helps underscore the political exclusions and consequences of these processes as they articulate with social contexts. This contribution [58] is one of several [55,57] that makes explicit linkages across the resource security nexus. Taken together, both cases [57,58] illustrate how exclusion becomes expressed, if not reinforced, both through formal governance institutions (and, processes of institutional change), as well as show re-scaled governance can re-configure exclusion in problematic fashions.…”

“…This contribution [58] is one of several [55,57] that makes explicit linkages across the resource security nexus. Taken together, both cases [57,58] illustrate how exclusion becomes expressed, if not reinforced, both through formal governance institutions (and, processes of institutional change), as well as show re-scaled governance can re-configure exclusion in problematic fashions. In a third example, Workman [59] considers that ways that water scarcity is produced by and embedded in water policies and infrastructures in Lesotho.…”