Since the late 2000’s, interest and investment in irrigation has picked-up again, but technocratic design and implementation practices still dominate.
There are disincentives for moving from blueprint approaches to interactive and participatory approaches, such as:
- Accountability problems: who are irrigation projects accountable to? Projects are generally led by government and donors, and although the design approach attempts to be participatory and create ownership amongst those farmers involved, accountability remains subject to donors’ political agendas and criteria on technological progress.
- The blueprint approach results in quicker, more efficient construction and higher profits for the contractor. This provides an economic incentive to minimise engagement with local social processes and to pursue a standardised model of ‘modern agriculture’.
A vicious cycle exists. When farmers are not involved in the design, they don’t appreciate the system. Consequently, farmers as ‘owners’ of the irrigation system are blamed for low performance explained through a lack of knowledge of operating procedures.
As farmers are seen as having limited knowledge, they are not involved in irrigation design. And as they are not involved, history repeats itself.
What seems disappointing about examples of irrigation projects such as PROIRRI is that existing knowledge on how to implement an interactive participatory design process is ignored or weakly institutionalised during the project.
For irrigation design to work it needs to reflect the local socioeconomic context. Irrigation practitioners must change from trying to ‘adapt the user to the system’ to ‘adapting the system to the user’.