An Empirical Examination on the Role of Water User Associations for Irrigation Management in Rural China

Abstract

Abstract Water user associations (WUAs) are commonly considered a beneficial institution to improve irrigation management. As one of the core components of irrigation reform in China, the number of WUAs has increased from a few in 1995 to nearly 100,000 today. This study examines the performance of irrigation management between villages with WUAs and villages without WUAs, with a set of 15,566 households collected in 941 randomly selected villages from 22 provinces in China. It finds that WUAs do not show overall superiority in almost all aspects in terms of improving irrigation management performance compared with traditional management institutions. Using the institutional analysis and development framework, it further demonstrates the diverse factors that jointly contribute to irrigation management performance, among which the WUAs play small role. The unsatisfactory performance of WUAs may be attributed to the absence of the conditions to support the WUAs functioning in China's centralized political system. To activate the WUAs, policies are recommended such as organizing WUAs based on hydrologic boundary, declining the overlap between the leadership of WUAs and that of the villages, endowing the WUA with more autonomy, and encouraging farmers to participate in the decision‐making process. A broader implication of this study is that there are diverse policy options to address water management challenges, which can be selected according to the specific condition. Achieving the congruence between institutional design and local context holds the key for sustainable water management.

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