Examines the extent to which the Government of Indonesia's aspirations were realized through turnover program adopted in 1987. The impacts of management turnover on irrigation management and irrigated agriculture in selected systems in West and Central Java are analyzed. This study is part of a comparative research program to examine the impacts of irrigation management transfer in several countries using a common methodology.

Studies the low-cost alternative strategy of selective lining of watercourses to reduce seepage and increase irrigated areas in the Indian subcontinent. Satellite remote-sensing (SRS) is seen as a cost-effective evaluation tool in view of its large area of synoptic and repetitive coverage.

The fall of the New Order government in 1998 and the political reform that followed posed substantial challenges for Indonesia's bureaucracy to continue fulfilling its mandate. This book analyses the process of bureaucratic reform in the irrigation sector. Using Irrigation Management Transfer policy as the entry point for analysis, it documents and analyses the irrigation bureaucracy’s ability to sustain its power and prominence in the sector’s development, amidst and against national and international pressures for reform. The book argues that bureaucratic reform in the irrigation sector, rather than attempting to change the bureaucracy's functioning in the image of national and global (good) governance perspectives and priorities, should instead focus on linking the irrigation bureaucracy's everyday practice more effectively with farmers’ needs and aspirations. Reform efforts of the past decades show that Indonesia’s irrigation sector development cannot be redirected without the irrigation bureaucracy’s knowledge, experience and cooperation, and without strengthening its downward accountability to farmer-irrigators.

Better water management in irrigation tank cascade systems is vital in achieving higher productive use of available water. To develop and implement management practices aimed at improving effective use of water, studies leading to the development of models that can predict available tank water in irrigation tank cascade systems are invaluable. This report presents a simple water balance model, Cascade, developed to predict tank water availability in the Thirappane tank cascade system in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The report includes calibration of the model and its application to predict tank water availability for rice crops over a 10-year period.

In India public (government) tubewells were built with the intention of providing irrigation to all categories of farmers in a fair, equitable and affordable manner. However, most public tubewell programs across India have failed on all these counts. Efforts to transfer their management to water users too have met with little success. Nonetheless, the Gujarat Water Resources Development Corporation (GWRDC)-a state-owned public company-has achieved rare success in tubewell transfer by handing over management of around 60 percent of public tubewells in the Gujarat state to user groups. This study tries to identify the factors that helped in accelerating the transfer process and evaluate the performance of transferred tubewells against those owned by individuals and GWRDC. It also suggests some policy changes that can make the scheme function better and explores the replicability of the success achieved in Gujarat.

Managing water resources is one of the most pressing challenges of our times - fundamental to how we feed 2 billion more people in coming decades, eliminate poverty, and reverse ecosystem degradation. This Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, involving more than 700 leading specialists, evaluates current thinking on water and its interplay with agriculture to help chart the way forward. It offers actions for water management and water policy - to ensure more equitable and effective use. This assessment describes key water-food-environment trends that influence our lives today and uses scenarios to explore the consequences of a range of potential investments. It aims to inform investors and policymakers about water and food choices in light of such crucial influences as poverty, ecosystems, governance, and productivity. It covers rainfed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater, marginal-quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land, and river basins. Ample tables, graphs, and references make this an invaluable work for practitioners, academics, researchers, and policymakers in water management, agriculture, conservation, and development. Published with IWMI.

In the Mediterranean region, agriculture is considered as the sector where the biggest volume of water can be saved as it represents around 80 percent of total demand, and a large amount of water is poorly used. The idea of the present report is to gather a number of "success stories". The case studies in five countries (Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia) were analysed in terms of main success as well as limiting factors, reported water savings and crop yield increase, as well as increase of water use efficiency. The lessons learnt include: Localised irrigation is not a miracle technology; modernised surface irrigation can be a water saving technique; a water conservation enabling environment is necessary to achieve successful water conservation and improve water use efficiency; sustainability of water management depends on carefully selected measures that complement each other.

Discusses and illustrates concepts for identifying ways of improving productivity of water within basins. The results of applying a water accounting procedure to four sub-basins in South Asia (Bhakra in India; Chishtian in Pakistan; Huruluwewa in nothern Sri Lanka; and Kirindi Oya in southern Sri Lanka) are presented. The methodology used identifies the quantities and productivity of various uses of water within a basin. This information is then used to identify the water-saving potential, and the means of improving the productivity of the managed supplies.