THE NECESSITY OF PARTICIPATORY MANAGEMENT IN WATER SECTOR IN IRAN

During the past decades, most of the investment, construction and management of the water projects in Iran have been the responsibility of the government, and the private sector had little influence in this regard. This policy of the government has caused the water projects to become less successful and have low efficiency, despite the large amount of the investment. In order to overcome some of these problems, the government passed several laws to attract the participation of farmers in development and construction of irrigation and drainage networks. This movement was the beginning of the official participation of farmers in the water sector in Iran and it proved that despite the difficulties of implementation of the program, it was successful in overall. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a mechanism to have more involvement from the farmers in different levels of projects including decision making, design, construction, operation, and maintenance. In order to achieve such objective, a proper structure and organization are needed in governmental agencies, investment institutes, and farmers associations. These components of the participatory management and responsibility should be well defined. Practical laws, methodologies, and instructions are necessary to achieve the objectives of the program. In this paper, the proposed structure of the farmers’ participation in water sector is explained.

Keywords:

participatory management , farmers associations , irrigation management transfer , privatization