Case identification

Country:     Ecuador, Province of Imbabura (150 km north of Quito)

Resource:     Irrigation water, a scarce resource to be shared among hundreds of users

Context

In 1972 the Ecuadorian Government nationalized all water resources and assigned their administrative management to a state agency, the Instituto Ecuatoriano de los Recursos Hídricos (INERHI), which has mainly performed a function of constructing new irrigation systems at high cost but with little success and impact. INERHI has also played a role in the planning of the resources and the granting of concessions for all the traditional irrigation systems, which represent 80% of the area under irrigation. These are frequently very old systems built in past centuries.

In 1986 INERHI requested ORSTOM's assistance for the study of the functioning of traditional irrigation in the Andes, a sector regarding which the central authorities were not very well informed. In order to gain an understanding of the nonstate systems, five zones were selected to serve as pilot study zones in each regional watershed. Urcuquí was chosen in 1987 because its situation in the Mira river basin could serve as a good example, this being a region where conflicts concerning water had been commonplace since the sixteenth century. The Urcuquí irrigation system is today formed by 320 hectares irrigated by the canal known as the Canal Grande or the Canal de Caciques. Within the area served by the system there are some 450 family production units.

The Urcuquí zone was studied by a multidisciplinary team between 1987 and 1991^/. The findings of the studies were communicated in meetings of residents and water users, after which work was started in 1993 on preparing a project for renovation of the irrigation system, which included reorganization of the institutional framework, redefining of users' rights and updating of the water management rules. CICDA negotiated financial support from the European Union, the French Ministry of External Affairs and other sources to enable it to head up this project; ORSTOM participated in the monitoring of the process, which lasted for four years, from 1994 to 1997.

At the same time at national level a debate has been underway since 1995 on the preparation of a new legal framework for water resources. The reform of the 1973 Water Resources Law--still under discussion--would open the way for partial privatization of access to water and for the development of private individual concessions. This reform is highly controversial, since it involves the risk of increasing the concentration of resources in the hands of a small number of persons, in particular the large landholders in the case of water, to the detriment of small farmers. Up in to Andes, irrigation is essential for farming and for the intensification of agriculture. However. while it is the small farmers who are raising the grain and root crops, fruits and vegetables the country needs and supplying it with dairy products, the policy of modernizing the State tends to favor the large agroindustrial-type farms (flower growing in the upland regions). In addition, this reform of the legal framework in respect of water could weaken the social cohesion of numerous rural communities and organizations of irrigation water users in the highlands who control the distribution of the water themselves.

In this context, the experience with water management gained by boards of users in Urcuquí and also in other parts of the country had made it possible to acquire and disseminate useful new references at both local and national level.

The initial situation

In 1987, with INERHI the Ecuadorian State still had a strong central administration accustomed to handling irrigation problems with a view to project planning by the institution but with very little local participation. The question of private participation was not really taken into account except in the administration of concessions under the 1973 legal system. While thee were certain budgets for supporting so-called "small-scale irrigation", they were limited to construction of a few intakes or isolated reservoirs.

The local people of Urcuquí have for over 400 years been managing an irrigation canal built in the sixteenth century by the indigenous inhabitants of the area. While the canal was appropriated by the large landowners in past centuries, as a result of a protracted agrarian struggle the farmers were able to recover it in 1945, since when it has been managed by a Board of Users. The concession of the water carried by the canal was recognized by INERHI in 1981 after eight years of negotiations.

The "Directorio de Aguas" in fact combines three boards, one of which, the board known as the "Junta de Caciques", represents the families descended from the builders of the canal and other purchasers of these lands with a special right: use of the canal's entire flow for two days in every fifteen. However, relations between these boards had been marked by rivalries and conflicts ever since the local farmers regained control of the water.

At the beginning of ORSTOM's study, the users' official position was that water was in short supply so a transfer channel needed to be built to bring more in, a "wishful-thinking" project studied by the State in the 1960s and involving a cost over US$16,000 per hectare! Certain ambiguities were apparent in the relations between the research team and the Directorio, since all the people adopted a dual position: remaining open at institutional level since they might thus get something from INERHI or the French cooperation people, but at the same time harboring doubts about the objectives of the study in case "they try to give the water back to the hacendados".

Thus, the water users always spoke of equitable distribution rules: 3 hours per hectare every 15 days with an equal flow in each water block of the system, referring back to decisions made in 1945. The first field observations revealed a totally different reality. At the entrance into the system the flow was theoretically sufficient for the area irrigated. However, there were many application problems in the parcels: variable flows, water use times on occasions greatly in excess of the rule and running to as much as 12 and 15 hours per hectare, and irrigation frequencies of much more often than every 15 days. This situation led to many conflicts, with everybody accusing the others of not abiding by the rules. The impacts on production were varied: some farmers achieved good productivities with intensified corn and bean growing, while others failed to so and returned to a more extensive and subsistence-type agriculture.

The INERHI staff had been present at the general meetings of users in the first few years after the nationalization of water resources, while the question of legal recognition of the concession remained pending. On various occasions, they sought to impose a more modern arrangement for distributing the water, but these attempts failed because they did not take into account the social and historical factors at the root of the prevailing conflicts. In the end, the INERHI Water Resources Agency left the management of the system to the users, but was brought in again on various occasions when problems arose regarding water allocations in the mountain watershed where the sources for the canal were located.

Finally, for the users the situation was highly unsatisfactory: low irrigation efficiency, numerous inequalities in distribution, complexity and lack of transparency. In this context, the intervention of ORSTOM and CICDA was unquestionably decisive for inducing a collective rethinking of the management of the water as a resource in the irrigation system, something which up till that date they had all refused to consider for fear that they might lose rights, and which the more privileged among them had succeeded in blocking. Could the local society have been able to settle its internal divisions and reform its institutions and rules through an endogenous process? At the least, this outside intervention in a severely conflict-ridden situation made it possible to present the problems in a new way, realistically but without excessive simplification.

The process of change

The mismatch between the distribution of the water and the needs of the cropping systems has been demonstrated by ORSTOM and its researchers, together with the historical and social causes of the conflicts concerning the community management of the resource. As of 1994, and at the request of the General Meeting of Users, CICDA has supported negotiations for reform of the distribution of the irrigation water among users and rehabilitation of the irrigation system. The collaboration with ORSTOM continued through the four years of CICDA's intervention and enabled a permanent reworking of the strategies implemented.

One of the fundamental objectives of this intervention was to demonstrate at both local and national level the importance of private farmer-managed irrigation for national economic development, the low cost of rehabilitation of these systems compared with the construction of costly new systems for which the country would have to go into debt, and finally, the importance of viewing irrigation not just as civil engineering work but as a social structure.

In this context, the intervention sought two complementary objectives:

• at local level, the rehabilitation of the system and of the water distribution rules, together with strengthening of the User Association's capacity to operate and maintain the system;

• at national level, the project sought to systematize elements and references of this water resource management experiment both for the training of professionals and as input into the debate still in progress on the preparation of a new legal framework for water resources in Ecuador.

The intervention of ORSTOM and CICDA in Urcuquí was accordingly followed very closely by CNRH, especially at the methodological level for the renewal of the management and use rules concerning the water, but also as regards conceptual inputs, even when certain analysis elements might be counter to the State's initial plans, such as the project to privatize access to water.

The main outcomes achieved are the following:

• rehabilitation of the irrigation system infrastructure with the users contributing 30% of the total cost of the work done and at a rehabilitation cost per hectare of less than US$350;

• renewal of the distribution of the water and of the water rights by means of a new rule approved by the General Meetings of Users limiting the rights to four hours per hectare, thereby achieving an irrigation frequency of shorter than 15 days, rather than intervals of longer than three weeks;

• strengthening of the User Association's system management and operating capabilities: regulations updated, increase in the basic tariff based on the users' own decision and creation of a specific system maintenance fund.

The first effect of this rehabilitation has been a significant increase in the yields of maize and beans, together with a diversification of the crop systems with the introduction of fruitgrowing, since fruit currently sells very well in the domestic and Colombian markets.

• preparation of instructional and vocational training documents: videos "Acequias en Los Andes" [Irrigation Systems in the Andes], "El riego en la comunidad andina: una construcción social" [Irrigation in the Andean Community: a social structure]; instructional modules and training sessions on the subject or intervention in irrigation within the framework of the CAMAREN system;^/

• participation in interinstitutional fora: Interinstitutional Forum in Irrigation (IFI)^/ in the "Water Resources Law", Research and Systematization" and "Watershed Management" groups;

• organization of visits to the Urcuquí project, national meetings for rural technicians and seminars on the question of private irrigation in Ecuador.

Lessons learned

The intervention in Urcuquí demonstrated that it is possible to define in a conflict situation a new scenario for distribution of a scarce resource, using mechanisms and facilities for establishing dialogue between users. The question if irrigation in the Andean region then goes beyond mere civil engineering work and must incorporate an approach involving coordinated resource management at national level.

The sustainability of the new water distribution rules approved and implemented in Urcuquí is assured by the strengthening of the Association of Users, which is today in a stronger position than ever before to enforce observance of rules, and performance of duties and agreements adopted on a consensual basis. Such consensus-building, while it may be spurred by external agents, must be a totally endogenous process.

Besides CNRH which is interested in repeating this experiment in other private systems, various financial agencies have been interested by the approach used for rehabilitating private irrigation systems in the Andes and for managing water resources. They have asked CICDA to help them set up new cooperation programs in different provinces of Ecuador that will view irrigation as a "social construction". Other private development organizations are currently drawing inspiration from the methods tried out in Urcuquí for new rehabilitation programs for farmer-managed irrigation systems in the Andes.

At farmer level, the experience gained from the negotiation of new water management rules has led to submission of a request to the Municipality of the Canton of Urcuquí for support for a wider program at canton level for coordinated resource management at national level. In this connection, the methods used in Urcuquí are not specific to that area or, in certain cases, to water management. They could also serve as a basis for designing similar coordinated management programs in the páramo (upland moors) or forest areas in other rural Andean zones, and for guidance for environmental or "resource conversation" projects which many cooperation agencies like to encourage, not to mention the municipalities which have now been given responsibility for these matters by the administrative decentralization processes underway.

Finally, the experiment carried out in Urcuquí shows the real danger of privatization of access to water resources, both at the economic level through the concentration processes it could cause with resultant marginalization of small-scale farming, and at the social level, since many rural Andean societies are structured on common rules for collective management of water. Moreover, the successful revising of the distribution rules and water rights through a process of dialogue among the parties demonstrates that privatization of water resources is not the sole route for increasing the efficiency of irrigation systems.

There are a large number of reports and publications on this experiment, both interdisciplinary diagnostic studies and concerning the actual modernization of the irrigation system. In addition, there are two videos which serve to illustrate the analysis and linkage processes between spatial and social levels, between management of the water and evolution of the agriculture practised, between institutional history of the system and explanation of the reworked roles of the local organizations and of the state agency with responsibility for the Mira River basin.