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In Spate Irrigation Systems in Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan

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In Spate Irrigation Systems in Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan 7 Water Rights and Rules, and Management in Spate Irrigation Systems in Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan Abraham Mehari,1* Frank van Steenbergen2** and Bart Schultz1,3*** 1UNESCO-IHE, Netherlands; *e-mails: [email protected]; [email protected]; 2MetaMeta Research, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; **e-mail: [email protected]; 3Civil Engineering Division, Rijkswaterstaat, Utrecht, Netherlands; ***e-mail: [email protected] Abstract Spate irrigation is a system of harvesting and managing flood water. In spate irrigation, flood water is emitted from wadis (ephemeral streams) and diverted to fields using earthen or concrete structures. By nature, flood water is unpredictable in occurrence, timing and volume, which puts special challenges to the farmers who use, co-share and co-manage the resource. Primarily based on the research conducted in spate irrigation systems in Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan, this chapter discusses the interlinkage between local flood water management and water rights and rules, and the enforcement mechanisms in place. It assesses how formal national/provincial land and water laws affect local flood water management and argues that what matters most are the local rules for cooperation and sharing the resource and, hence, that formal water and land rights for spate irrigation should recognize local water rights and management. Keywords: customary practices, enforcement, flood water management, irrigation management transfer, local organizations, spate irrigation, water rights and rules, Eritrea, Yemen, Pakistan. Introduction irrigation. We emphasize this point to move away from naive and simplistic understanding of This chapter describes the water rights and rules formal water rights, where water rights are seen in spate irrigation and discusses their role in as mechanisms to create distinctive ownership. water management. There are three ways in In this naive understanding – that can be traced which this chapter contributes to the central back to the work of Douglas North on early land theme of this volume. The first is by analyzing rights (North and Thomas, 1977) and the subse- the complexity and robustness of local water quent work in the field of New Institutional rights. Spate irrigation water rights, which are Economics – property rights are seen as the main different from perennial irrigation water rights, institution to claim entitlements. are not fixed quantities or entitlements. Instead, At policy level, water rights reform is often they are operating rules that respond to a variety simplified as the intervention that will either of circumstances, which are at the core of spate help protect weaker interests on the strength of © CAB International 2007. Community-based Water Law and Water Resource Management 114 Reform in Developing Countries (eds B. van Koppen, M. Giordano and J. Butterworth) Water Rights and Rules 115 the property claim or, alternatively, help and financially influential farmers) that deter- achieve better economic efficiency by facilitat- mine what rules and rights have to be imple- ing trade and exchange of rights. The point mented. made in this chapter is that water rights in spate The last is by discussing how water rights irrigation (as in other fields of water manage- change in the course of developing infrastruc- ment) are inseparable from the way water ture, particularly in spate irrigation. Rights management is organized and that the rights relate very much to operational rules, and these are part of a bundle of responsibilities to the rules change with changing infrastructure – with common group. Water rights are not something different possibilities for upstream control and that precedes water management or can be different common maintenance requirements. used in isolation to change water management This chapter is divided as follows. First, it and water distribution. discusses the different operational rules and The second way this chapter contributes to practices – giving examples from different soci- the central theme of this volume is by recognizing eties. Then, it discusses the way local organiza- that water rights and water allocation in spate tions and institutions have enforced (with irrigation rules differ between societies, although various degrees of effectiveness) these water there are also cross-cutting similarities. In this rights and rules, and have even tried to codify chapter we hope to provide some examples from them. Next, it discusses how some of the water Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan (see Fig. 7.1). It is rights and rules have changed over the past important to understand not only that water decades under the influence of particular exter- rights are the product of the resource system (the nal investment programmes. To start with, spate irrigation system) but that there are higher however, we want to describe briefly what spate forces at work (e.g. the presence of politically irrigation is. Fig. 7.1. Map study areas. 116 A. Mehari et al. Spate Irrigation under spate irritation systems. It can also, in theory, confuse cooperation and create a free- Spate irrigation is a resource system, whereby for-all competition. Water rights and water flood water is emitted through normally dry distribution rules in spate irrigation, however, wadis and conveyed to irrigable fields. It is a regulate access to water and – when enforced – pre-planting system, where the flood season minimize conflict. Water rights and water distri- precedes the crop production period. In most bution rules also define the likelihood of irriga- spate irrigation systems in Eritrea, Yemen and tion for different areas and, hence, serve as the Pakistan the major floods occur between June key to the collective maintenance and rebuild- and September, which is the time of heavy rain- ing of diversion infrastructure. In particular, fall in upper catchments; and crop growth takes where flood water users depend on one place between October and February exclu- another for maintaining flood channels and sively, depending on the water stored in the (re)constructing diversion structures, and this soil. To establish a spate irrigation system, there work is substantial, agreement on how water is should be a mountainous or hilly topography distributed is a precondition for cooperation. that generates run-off; and adjacent, low-lying Water distribution rules will also make it easier fields with deep soils able to store ample mois- to predict which land will be irrigated. As such, ture for the crops during periods of no precipita- they encourage pre-flooding land preparation, tion (Mehari et al., 2005). which is important for adequate water storage Spate irrigation systems support livelihoods and moisture conservation and key to high of often the poorest segments of the rural popu- yields. lation in the Middle East, west Asia and North and East Africa (van Steenbergen, 1997). An estimate of the land coverage of spate irrigation systems in some countries, which the authors Water Rights and Rules in Managing compiled from various sources, is presented in Unpredictable Flood Water Table 7.1. Apart from the names of countries To manage the unpredictable nature of flood listed in Table 7.1, the existence of spate irriga- water and reduce the risk of conflicts, several tion is reported in Chile, Bolivia, Iran, categories of water rights and rules are in place Afghanistan, Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia and in different spate irrigation systems. The most Kenya; but there is no reliable estimate of its common and widely applied rights and rules land coverage. (Mehari et al., 2003; van Steenbergen, 2004) In spate irrigation systems uncertainty is a relate to the following: given. The unpredictability in timing, volume and sequence of flood water is the main cause ● Demarcation of land that is entitled to irriga- of uncertainties and risks in crop production tion. Table 7.1. Spate-irrigated versus total irrigated area in selected countries. Total irrigated area Year of data Total irrigated Spate-irrigated covered by spate Country collection area (ha) area (ha) irrigation (%) Algeria 1997 560,000 70,000 13 Eritrea 2005 28,000 15,630 56 Libya 1997 470,000 53,000 11 Mongolia 1993 84,300 27,000 32 Morocco 1997 1,258,200 165,000 13 Pakistan 2005 17,580,000 1,450,000 8 Somalia 1984 200,000 150,000 75 Sudan 1997 1,946,000 280,000 14 Tunisia 1997 481,520 98,320 20 Yemen 2003 485,000 193,000 40 Water Rights and Rules 117 ● Breaching of bunds. fields had received the quantity of water ● Proportion of the flood water going to differ- granted to them by the other various rules. Due ent canals and fields. to the strict adherence to this rule, only 50 ha of ● Sequence in which the different canals and the 1400 have been established so far and the fields are irrigated. water right of downstream farmers has been ● Depth of irrigation that each field is entitled preserved. In Eritrea, fields are considered to be to receive. fully established when they accumulate a mini- ● Access to second (and third) water turns. mum depth of about 10 cm of alluvial sedi- ● Distribution of large and small floods. ments. With a mean annual sediment deposition of about 3 cm, this would require at These categories of water rights and rules least three flood seasons. are discussed below, with some relevant illustra- tive examples from Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan. Rights and rules on breaching of bunds Rights and rules concerning the breaching of Rights and rules on land demarcation the bunds of diversion and distribution struc- tures and fields are widely applied in areas Demarcation rights and rules are common in where the entire river bed is blocked by earthen the lowland spate-irrigated areas in Eritrea, bunds, and access of water to downstream Yemen and Pakistan, where water is scarce and canals and fields depends on the breaking of land is abundant; yet, they are almost non-exis- these immediate upstream structures. In many tent in the central highlands of the countries cases, the earthen and brushwood bunds are where water is relatively more plentiful than constructed in such a way that they breach land.
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