PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES OF PARTICIPATORY IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT UNDER THE SMALL LAND-HOLDING CONDITION: WITH A SPECIAL REFERENCE TO INDONESIAN PRACTICE

Indonesia achieved remarkable progress in water resources development within thirty years till 1997 through government led development projects. However, the institutional development to sustain this progress got insufficient attention. From the lessons learned before the multidimensional crisis, it has been recognized that the severe crisis had been due to the chronic neglect of the farmers’ roles in almost the entire process of development, rehabilitation, and routine operation and maintenance of irrigation infrastructures. In an attempt to resolve the dilemmatic situation to maintain sustainable rice production on the one hand, while keeping pace the productivity level with the increasing population growth on the other, an emphasis has been given to irrigation development and management based on participatory approach. The program had been set up to reduce central government's burden on Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs aiming for sustainable irrigation O&M by virtue of “Participatory Irrigation Management – PIM” approach. Under the said program, a number of policy adjustments on water resources had been enacted. Further to this, PIM attempts have also been carried out including: turning over to the Water User Association – WUA, of small irrigation schemes; encouragement of irrigation service fee (ISF); Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT); Participatory design and construction program; “field laboratories” for visual process of “learning by doing”, and other such government initiatives. However, it turned up that the attempts has been going very slowly and yet, still tended to be least sustainable. This has been partially suspected by the fact that the economy of the farmers and farming conditions under the fragmented land ownership, which in fact, are already small, has been marginalizing the already marginal incomes. As a result, the small income farmers are hardly available to participate with the PIM’s endeavors. To facilitate resolving the problems, the newly enacted Water Law No. 7/2004, together with the Government Regulation No. 20/2006 about “Irrigation”, prescribe that the O&M responsibility for primary and secondary canals belongs to the Central Government, Provincial as well as Local Autonomous Government with certain role sharing criteria settled down by the Government Regulation on Irrigation Management. For reducing the burden of the farmers, they assigned responsibility to operate and maintain the tertiary canals through their water users associations (WUA). This paper intends to discuss a series of practices, problems, and perspectives on participatory irrigation management under the small land holding condition, the implication of the new policies on technical and traditional irrigation schemes, institutional and legal aspects of O&M, as well as the role of WUA’s. These include technical, institutional, and financial, as well as regulatory instruments, and other such measures toward sustainable PIM implementation.

کلیدواژه ها:

Irrigation Management ، Small Land Holding ، PIM Approach ، and Indonesia