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Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
0308-521X/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
Communality in farmer managed irrigation systems: Insights from Spain,
Ecuador, Cambodia and Mozambique
Jaime Hoogesteger
a
,
*
, Alex Bolding
a
, Carles Sanchis-Ibor
b
, Gert Jan Veldwisch
a
,
Jean-Philippe Venot
c
, Jeroen Vos
a
, Rutgerd Boelens
a
,
d
a
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
b
Valencian Centre for Irrigation Studies (CVER), Universitat Polit`
ecnica de Val`
encia, Spain
c
French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), Universit´
e de Montpellier, France
d
Centre for Latin American Studies and Documentation, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
HIGHLIGHTS GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
•We need new frameworks to understand
farmer managed irrigation systems
(FMIS) sustainability.
•This paper develops the analytical
framework of communality to ll this
gap.
•Four cases of sustained FMIS are
analyzed through communality.
•Differences in strategies to sustain irri-
gation systems are identied.
•Communality opens new avenues of in-
quiry to better understand the sustain-
ability of FMIS.
ARTICLE INFO
Editor: Jagadish Timsina
Keywords:
Water collectives
Irrigation
Collective action
Political agency
Community
ABSTRACT
CONTEXT: Worldwide farmer managed irrigation systems have provided crops for food, feed and the market for
centuries. From high mountain environments to river valleys and deltas, in all continents people have organized
to construct, use, maintain, transform and sustain irrigated agro-ecosystems. In this context it is important to
better understand how these systems are sustained.
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this contribution is to explore and theorize through which strategies and mecha-
nisms irrigators are able to sustain these systems in a constantly changing socio-environmental context.
METHODS: The study is based on ethnographic qualitative research in four areas where farmer managed irri-
gation systems are sustained by irrigators (Valencia region, Spain; Ecuadorian highlands; Cambodian Mekong
delta; and Tsangano district, Mozambique). Research consisted of interviews and observations in these areas and
was supported by a literature review of what has been published about these systems.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Results show that farmer managed irrigation systems are dynamic systems that
constantly transform but that are sustained in these changes through what we term ‘communality’. We introduce
this term to point out three interrelated elements that stand at the basis of farmer managed irrigation systems
sustenance, namely: commons, community and polity. Analysis of the four case studies points out that these three
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jaime.hoogesteger@wur.nl (J. Hoogesteger).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Agricultural Systems
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103552
Received 1 August 2022; Received in revised form 30 September 2022; Accepted 20 October 2022
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
2
elements are mobilized differently by farmers depending on their socio-environmental context. We show that the
mobilization of these different elements amidst internal and external challenges and conicts, forms the basis for
the longevity and sustainability of collectively managed irrigation systems.
SIGNIFICANCE: In the literature on farmer managed irrigation systems collective action has been portrayed as
the main pillar that sustains these systems. This contribution challenges this notion by showing that irrigation
systems are sustained by a combination of individual actions, collective practices, normative frameworks and
organizational forms; a sense of community; and the development of political agency (polity). Recognizing that
these elements come together as site specic hybrids opens new avenues of inquiry to better understand the
sustainability of farmer managed irrigation systems.
1. Introduction
User managed irrigation systems are for many rural communities
around the world the basis to access water for agricultural production
and other uses. For millennia user managed irrigation systems have
supported agricultural production and related rural livelihoods by
guaranteeing a fairly secure water supply that allows for extended
cropping seasons, double or triple cropping, and the production of crops
that would not thrive under rainfall conditions. Irrigation systems have
been constructed and used in almost all climates and geophysical set-
tings around the world. Some examples include spate irrigation and
qanats in the deserts of the Middle East and Mediterranean Regions;
mountain irrigation systems in the European Alps, Himalayas (Asia),
Andes (Latin America), Rocky Mountains (North America) and along the
slopes of the Kilimanjaro (Africa); irrigation in valley bottoms (bas-fond
and dambos) in Sub-Saharan Africa, reservoir based (tanks) systems in
India, and irrigation through ood control in fertile deltas of many
larger river systems around the world. User managed irrigation systems
cover a broad spectrum, from small systems with only a few small-
holders that capture and distribute water collectively to (ancient) large
irrigation systems of over 100,000 ha made of interconnected networks
of small systems that stretch over large areas and incorporate thousands
of users such as the large irrigation systems in the desert coast of Peru
(Vos and Vincent, 2011) and the 20,000 ha of interconnected Subak
systems on Bali (Roth, 2011).
Overcoming social, physical and ecological transformations is part
and parcel of user managed irrigation systems’ functioning. When water
scarcity or socio-economic uncertainty prevail, conicts tend to arise as
users struggle to gain or maintain their access to water to ensure agri-
cultural production (Aubriot, 2022; Agrawal and Gibson, 2001). Despite
recurring challenges, many user managed irrigation systems have been
able to overcome these through a process of constant adaptation and
transformation. These transformations take place in different yet inter-
related realms such as the agricultural/productive, the organizational
and normative, the cultural, the economic, the technical/infrastructural
(Boelens and Vos, 2014; Poussin et al., 2006). In doing so, users engage
with each other, irrigation infrastructure and the environment as well as
with their broader environmental context and external actors, such as
users of other irrigation systems, the state, non-governmental organi-
zations, engineering companies, markets and more (Berthet and Hickey,
2018; García-Moll´
a et al., 2020; Mirhano˘
glu et al., 2022).
In the last century the world population has strongly urbanized and
globalized, intensifying the relations between the urban and rural and
the far and the near, triggering agrarian transitions (Hoogesteger and
Rivara, 2021). These inuence rural lives and cultures through the
diversication of livelihoods, lifestyles and peasant economies with
important impacts on how people relate to agriculture and irrigation
(Baumann, 2022). In spite of these changes irrigated agriculture still
plays a fundamental role in many rural communities and their econo-
mies contributing to local food security, rural livelihoods and rural labor
demands, as well as in the recreation of cultural practices and relations,
place identity and related community (Aubriot, 2022; Boelens and
Hoogesteger, 2017; Reyes-Escate et al., 2022).
Departing from this context, in this contribution we aim to explore,
better understand and theorize how users re-create their (ancient) irri-
gation systems to ensure their longivity (Abdullaev and Mollinga, 2010;
Aubriot, 2022; Mirhano˘
glu et al., 2022; Misquitta and Birkenholtz,
2021). To do so we use the notion of irrigation communities which we
dene as the group of people that use, relate to, and identify with an
irrigation system (Boelens, 2014; García-Moll´
a et al., 2020). We
furthermore depart from a socio-technical understanding of irrigation
systems (Bolding et al., 1995; Mollinga, 2013). This understanding
recognizes that the natural environment (climate, water, soil, topog-
raphy), the social world (culture, economy, institutions) and the tech-
nical (hydraulic infrastructure and agricultural technologies) are
intrinsically related and mutually constitutive or in the words of Shah
and Boelens, 2021 ‘all at once’ (see also Hommes et al., 2022). Changes
in one of the dimensions always has implications on the others. In this
contribution we take the social dimension as entry point and theorize it
as pivotal in mediating adaptations in the natural and technical di-
mensions of irrigation systems. To do so, we develop the notion of
‘communality’ which intertwines the concepts of commons, community
and polity as three fundamental pillars that guarantee the recreation of
the social fabric that sustains irrigation systems. We use this concept to
inform our analysis of several cases of sustained user managed irrigation
systems, namely a traditional irrigation system of the Valencia region
Spain, smallholder managed irrigation in the Ecuadorian Andes, the
Cambodian Preks, and farmer led irrigation development in Tsangano
District, Mozambique.
The article is structured as follows. After this introduction we present
the research methodology, then we present the notion of communality
and its sub-components followed by the analysis of the four case studies
that inform this contribution. These different cases are analyzed through
the notion of communality and show how different elements of this
notion manifest distinctively in every case. In section ve we compare
the four cases. In the conclusions we reect on the notion of commu-
nality and how it helps to better understand the longevity of traditional
irrigation systems in very different contexts.
2. Methodology
The study is based on ethnographic qualitative research in the four
case studies. For data collection different ethnographic research
methods to study collective action were used (Meinzen-Dick et al.,
2004). These methods consisted of open and semi-structured interviews
with policy makers, bureaucrats, staff from development agencies,
leaders and ex‑leaders of the irrigation communities, irrigators, tech-
nicians working for the irrigation communities and technical staff of
non-governmental organizations supporting these irrigation commu-
nities. Personal notes of these interviews were made and in cases where
permission by the interviewees was granted, interviews were audio-
recorded. Field observations (Strauss, 1987) in the irrigation systems
were likewise recorded in the researchers’ personal notes. Participatory
observations (Clark et al., 2009) were done during events organized
and/or attended by the irrigation communities during the researchers’
eldwork periods and, in some cases, researchers engaged in partici-
patory research activities. Aside from these primary sources of infor-
mation, annual reports, statistics and where existent websites of the
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
3
irrigation communities were retrieved and analyzed. In the cases where
state agencies and/or NGOs supported the irrigation communities
through projects, the project reports and working documents were
retrieved and analyzed. A detailed methodology description for each of
the cases can be found in for: Spain (García-Moll´
a et al., 2020; Sanchis-
Ibor et al., 2021), Ecuador (Hoogesteger, 2013a), Cambodia (Ivars and
Venot, 2018; Venot and Jensen, 2022; Venot and Jensen, 2022), and
Mozambique (Nkoka et al., 2014).
The development of the theoretical framework was informed by -and
builds on- interdisciplinary literature on irrigation studies, collective
action and community based natural resources management. It espe-
cially builds on earlier insights, theory and frameworks developed by
the authors in Boelens (2014), Boelens and Hoogesteger (2017), Hoo-
gesteger (2013b), Hoogesteger and Verzijl (2015), Ivars and Venot
(2018), Venot and Cl´
ement (2013), Vos et al. (2020), Woodhouse et al.
(2017), Veldwisch et al. (2019) among others. In analyzing and
reworking these theoretical insights we focused on developing a
framework that allows for a better understanding of how and through
which social mechanisms irrigation communities sustain their systems.
Specic attention was given to develop a framework and related
analytical tools that better explain why some irrigation systems are
sustained where classical collective action research (see for instance
Ostrom, 1990, 2007, 2009) would predict contradictory outcomes. From
this perspective the developed theoretical framework of communality
offers new analytical tools that build on-, and expand, earlier
theoretizations.
3. Communality in irrigation systems
Many scholars have posed that collective action is the basis for the
sustainability of user managed irrigation systems. Through collective
action basic infrastructure and water ows are managed and maintained
allowing users to access water for irrigation and sometimes other uses at
plot level. Economists inspired by the work of Ostrom (1990, 2007) have
identied factors that inuence the levels and probability of collective
action for irrigation system operation and maintenance (Mushtaq et al.,
2007). They show that, among others, a relatively secure water supply,
clarity in system boundaries and related sharing of responsibilities, a
high dependence of users’ livelihoods on irrigated agriculture, close
access to agricultural markets, homogeneity in users, and the presence of
other local organizations positively impact the levels of collective action
in irrigation systems (Bardhan, 2000; Poteete and Ostrom, 2004; Araral
Jr, 2009). However, many user managed irrigation systems have proven
to persist and continue to be operational despite many odds that would
indicate low levels of collective action (Boelens and Seemann, 2014;
Sanchis Ibor et al., 2017; Paerregaard, 2018; Villamayor-Tomas et al.,
2020). To better understand this, we turn to more anthropological
research approaches and focus specically on the notion of
communality.
The notion of communality, which we develop here, offers the op-
portunity to further explore how irrigation collectives re-create and
sustain their irrigation systems through very different strategies that go
beyond the classic notion of collective action. Communality is dened
by the Collins Dictionary (2022) as ‘a feeling or spirit of cooperation and
belonging arising from common interests and goals’ or ‘the state or
condition of being communal’ without it having to be grounded only or
necessarily in institutionalized collective action (see also Esteva, 2014).
We take this notion of ‘a communal subject’ and ‘an active we’ as de-
parture point and bring it together with the notions of commons, com-
munity and polity as constitutive elements of communality (See Fig. 1).
Communality, in the context of farmer managed irrigation systems, can
be dened as the engagement in hybrid action for the use, operation and
maintenance of an irrigation system via a mix of individual and/or
collective practices, and/or the engagement of external actors to ensure
the functioning and sustainability of the system based on a local (hy-
draulic) identity, and/or formal and informal normative frameworks
and ad-hoc practices. Below the three constitutive concepts or commu-
nality are further elaborated.
3.1. Commons
The commons can be dened as the natural resources, in this case
water, together with the members of a community or group of users who
manage and use this resource for collective and individual benet. In
user managed irrigation systems this concerns water ows and the water
infrastructure through which these ows link the different users. The
characteristics of this infrastructure and of the water availability often
play a very important role in shaping how water as a common resource is
managed (e.g. Ivars and Venot, 2018); and through which individual
and/or collective practices and institutional arrangements.
In mountain or hill irrigation water availability is often constrained
and high and continued investments need to be made to maintain, repair
and operate the infrastructure. This is usually regulated by formal and
informal normative frameworks which establish rights and duties
(Aubriot, 2022; Hoogesteger, 2013b; Zwarteveen et al., 2005). Addi-
tionally an organization or institution (formal or informal) that takes
charge of implementing and enforcing the norms is in place. Although
formal rules, rights and positions are often present and formally ar-
ranged, in practice these tend to be malleable and in a constant process
of transformation. In other systems such as those found in valley bottoms
and oodplains, where infrastructures are often lighter and diffuse,
institutional arrangements tend to be less structured and collective ac-
tion often takes the form of loosely coordinated individual practices. But
in most cases tasks that guarantee the continuity and longevity of irri-
gation systems may be divided into the following main categories (see
also Boelens et al., 2015: 112–113; Boelens and Hoogendam, 2002):
- Tasks of operational water management: operation of hydraulic
works to guide water ows through individual (often loosely coor-
dinated) practices and/or through coordinated action based on a
normative framework that establishes responsibilities such as
scheduling, distribution and surveillance of water shifts to specic
individuals within the irrigation community.
- Tasks of construction and maintenance of the infrastructure: design,
construction, repair and modication of hydraulic works and the
irrigation network through either individual or collective in-
vestments and practices; and sometimes through the engagement of
external support.
In irrigation communities where collective action prevails as the
basis for the above tasks the following are also essential (see Hooges-
teger, 2013b):
Fig. 1. Communality and its constituent elements commons, community, polity
(own elaboration).
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
4
- Tasks of internal organization: denition of objectives, decision-
making, activities coordination and planning, monitoring of imple-
mentation, conict resolution, and ensuring members’ participation.
- Tasks of mobilizing and administering resources: of both the mem-
bers and of external resources that are support irrigation commu-
nities; e.g. nancial means, material resources, agricultural products,
labor, and information.
The contents of these elements and the degree and form of collective
action that is needed to sustain the hydrosocial irrigation system de-
pends on its technical complexity, on the range of activities to be
implemented, on the degree of specialization they require, on the
number of users, and on the characteristics of ‘external’ socio-political,
nancial-economic and agro-climatological factors. Users engagement
in water use, as well as in the tasks that are needed for it can be seen as a
process of commoning that cannot be construed as a particular kind of
entity, rather it is “an unstable and malleable social relation between a
particular self-dened social group [irrigators] and those aspects of its
actually existing or yet-to-be-created social and/or physical environ-
ment deemed crucial to its life and livelihood” (Harvey, 2012). This
creates and recreates a social relation between and among the users
(commoners) and the irrigation system and its water ows (a common).
How these relations get shaped and reproduce within an irrigation
community are extremely diverse; as Greslou (1989) observed, there are
as many ways to allocate, manage and distribute water as there are
‘types of water’ and organizational levels, from the family level to the
inter-family group, community, ethnic group.
3.2. Community
A community is usually considered as a social unit that is bound
together by interdependence and shares some sort of identity. As many
community irrigation studies show, this binding together does not imply
bonds of intrinsic solidarity or social justice, nor narrowly bounded
political-geographical or cultural systems (e.g. Hoogesteger, 2013b,
Mirhano˘
glu et al., 2022; Roth et al., 2015). Community identity can
come from sources such as place identity, religion, values, culture,
ethnic identity or other forms of identication and belonging. For the
Andes, Boelens (2014) describes what he has termed as shared hydraulic
identities in which water is the central element that binds a specic
community together. Often different sources of identity and shared in-
terests that unite people intermingle, intersect and interrelate with each
other (C´
ardenas and Ostrom, 2004). As such water users of an irrigation
system can be bound to each other through ties and interdependencies
that range from village or place bonds to shared ethnicity, professional
background or political party. These intersecting identities are a con-
stant source of unity and oftentimes also disputes or outright conicts.
This paradox of on the one side unity in the midst of internal disparity,
has been termed ‘agonistic unity’ by Colloredo-Mansfeld (2009).
Agonistic unity is conceptualized as the process of managing differences,
negotiating disputes and constructing a common shared identity that
enables communities to sustain themselves and mobilize the required
resources to re-create the shared commons (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 2009;
Verran and Christie, 2013). Through culturally specic forms of com-
munity re-creation people get involved in a variety of individual and
collective practices, initiatives and activities through which they root
and afrm themselves as constitutive of their community. Organization
in whatever form there is, rather than being an end, constitutes a process
and a means for water users collectives to manage and sustain, often
through constant transformations, water use systems and community
(Hoogesteger and Verzijl, 2015). In some communities, there are special
roles and procedures for irrigation matters, whereas in others they are
included in the overall grouping of other community issues (Hooges-
teger, 2013a). Even in cases where communities make their own sepa-
ration into water-related and non-water-related institutions, this often
may be supercial. Because of this ‘community embeddedness’ of
irrigation tasks, users often share a series of cognitive elements, which
are the ideas and beliefs about how to cooperate and interact with each
other in and around the use and management of water through partic-
ular ‘water cultures’ and ‘hydraulic identities’ (Boelens, 2014). However
one cannot take these for granted nor see them as static and xed.
Different water cultures and related community evolve and change as a
result of social, cultural, economic, technical, managerial and climato-
logical transformations within which communities, irrigation systems
and related water cultures are embedded.
3.3. Polity
We refer to polity here in terms of a political entity; that is a group of
people or community that has the capacity to mobilize resources to
advance their interests vis-`
a-vis state agencies and other external actors
such as other user groups, non-governmental organizations, politicians,
etc. We conceptualize polity building on the notion of water collectives
(see Vos et al., 2020). The idea of water collectives is distinct from the
inuential conceptualization of Elinor Ostrom (e.g. Ostrom, 2007, 2009)
that posit communal systems as relatively isolated from their institu-
tional surroundings and not politically active outside the irrigation
system they manage. Instead, the notion of “water collectives” puts to
the fore the political nature of such organizations (see also Clement,
2010; Whaley, 2018).
Building on the notion of grassroots scalar politics (Hoogesteger and
Verzijl, 2015) we propose to study polity of irrigation communities (a
specic form of water collectives) by focusing on the strategies by which
these pursue their interests through interactions and alliances with
differently scaled (local, regional, national) actors and networks. Irri-
gation communities use different strategies to pursue their interests and
defend their commons. These can be bundled in three distinct clusters of
strategies which are: a) the consolidation of new scaled organizations
that bundle several irrigation communities to defend the collective in-
terests at broader scales; b) the creation of networks and alliances with
external actors that have the capacity to support and/or materialize the
demands of (some members of) the irrigation community; and c) the
development of subversive strategies that can be visible such as street
protests, boycotts and mediatic campaigns through which politicians
and policy makers are put under pressure to listen to the collective’s
demands, or operate silently through lobby, personal contacts and other
strategies. Through these strategies irrigation communities increase
their ability to advance their interests and access nancial and political
support from state agencies (municipal, provincial, national), politicians
and other actors. At the same time these strategies can increase the ca-
pacity of irrigators to gain a voice in decision making processes that
concern their interests (Perreault, 2008; Perreault, 2014; Hoogesteger,
2016, 2017). The basis of most of these strategies is the creation of al-
liances. In doing so they regularly switch alliances and networks from
those that cannot help them with a specic demand at hand, to those
that have the capacities and power to do so. In this way political space is
strategically sought and polity developed (Bebbington et al., 2010;
Hoogesteger et al., 2017).
Irrigation communities’ capacity to develop political agency at any
given moment in time, does not only depend on their internal strength.
Vos et al. (2020) identied ve mayor contextual factors that inuence
irrigators communities’ capacity to develop political agency: (1) the
support or counterwork offered by the state bureaucracy, (2) support by
the academic environment and societal water culture and ideas about
the environment, (3) strength of the civil society and freedom of
expression in the media, (4) the economic circumstances, and (5) the
water, climate and agricultural technology context.
4. Analyzing the four case studies
In the section below we explore how different elements of commu-
nality work out and ensure irrigation system longevity based on four
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
5
case studies in very different contexts. In all systems infrastructure to
guide water ows has been sustained and modernized over the past
centuries.
4.1. The Acequia real del Júcar: Sustaining an ancient irrigation system
through political strategizing
The irrigators community (comunidad de regantes)(IC) of the Acequia
Real del Júcar (ARJ) brings together all the farmers who irrigate from a
canal built in the 13th century by King Jaume I. Expanded in the 18th
century, it covers 19,000 ha on the alluvial plain between the river Jucar
and the coastal lagoon of L’Albufera, in the Valencia Region, east of
Spain. The ARJ has been governed by the irrigators through well insti-
tutionalized collective action since its foundation, but with different
degrees of involvement by external actors such as the crown or the
municipalities. Since the end of the 19th century, the irrigators (land-
holders) have completely controlled the institution, through elected
positions in 20 local boards and a general government board that brings
these 20 together under the ARJ. The ARJ has played a pivotal role in
ensuring sustained use, operation, maintenance and modernization of
the irrigation system through the mobilization of collective action,
which involved proactive political strategies of engagement with a
multitude of actors (polity) – most notably the Spanish government.
Based on a strong institutional foundation of organized irrigators, the
main challenge for the ARJ has always been to defend their water
allocation from the Jucar River vis-`
a-vis other (new) water users.
Coexistence with other river users has led to confrontations and the
elaboration of alliances and political strategies such as the creation of
the Sindicato de las Siete Acequias del Júcar in 1866, which played a
pivotal role in preventing the expansion of irrigation in the upper basin
and to stop the plans for inter-basin water transfers to the neighboring
province of Alicante (Calatayud, 1988a, 1988b).
In the early 1930s, a company obtained a State concession to build
and manage a large reservoir in Alarc´
on, in the upper basin of the Jucar
river. This meant leaving the regulation of the river in the hands of a
private company. The ARJ rmly opposed this initiative and again
mobilized the irrigators of the lower basin to confront the national
policy. They requested from the Ministry of Public Works the creation of
a river basin authority (RBA) controlled by both the irrigators and the
hydropower companies already active in the basin. This was done to
curb the aspirations of new users and to guide the construction and
management of reservoirs in the Júcar basin. The approval decree of the
RBA (Confederaci´
on Hidrogr´
aca del Júcar) took place in November
1934, when a former ARJ lawyer was president the Spanish Republic
(Mateu, 2011). The irrigators of the lower Júcar had a majority repre-
sentation in the RBA assembly, 30 delegates out of 52 (D’Amaro, 2012).
Throughout the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), the political appa-
ratus attempted to outlaw the Spanish ICs. The ARJ headed the resis-
tance of these plans by organizing semi-clandestine meetings, creating a
national federation (FENACORE), ghting dissolution orders in court,
and putting in place political levers to ensure their survival (D’Amaro,
2022).
Under the Franco regime, the ARJ also promoted and nanced the
construction of the Alarc´
on reservoir, the only large dam (1112 Mm
3
)
fully paid by farmers in Spain. They created the association USUJ
(Unidad Sindical de Usuarios del Júcar), together with ve other ICs of the
Lower Jucar and a hydropower company, in order to defend their
common interests once the RBA lost its participatory organs and was
placed under the strict control of state engineers (Carles-Genov´
es et al.,
2007).
The development of new irrigation systems in the upper reaches of
the Jucar Watershed (in the La Mancha region) (100,000 ha) since the
1980s reduced the water availability in the lower Jucar River. This led to
tensions between the two regions. These were partially resolved in 2001
with the signing of the so-called Alarc´
on Agreement in which USUJ
ceded the ownership and management of the Alarc´
on reservoir to the
State (Sanchis-Ibor et al., 2019). In exchange, the State guaranteed them
the historical priority of water use; gave them a 60-year exemption on
dam maintenance costs; and assumed the complete nancing of the
modernization of the irrigation system towards drip irrigation.
The adoption of drip irrigation started to change the hydraulic
infrastructure of the ARJ in 2006. This led to important changes in its
internal organization. The design, installation and later also the main-
tenance of drip irrigation networks was implemented by private com-
panies, which designed drip irrigation networks according to
standardized models, not adapted to local necessities. This generated
numerous technical and maintenance problems, which increased the
management costs. New technical personnel was hired by ARJ to
operate the drip irrigation systems, and this technical staff progressively
introduced changes in the infrastructure of drip irrigation systems,
adapting it to the local conditions and reducing operational costs
(Ortega-Reig et al., 2017a, 2017b; Poblador et al., 2021). In this process,
technicians (usually hydraulic engineers) have centralized management
by gradually replacing the traditional local ditch tenders.
Changes in irrigation practices came alongside political engagement
(Carles-Genov´
es et al., 2007; García-Moll´
a et al., 2013). To defend their
‘traditional water allocation’, during the rst two decades of the 21th
century, the ARJ ercely opposed the Júcar-Vinalop´
o water transfer
(Ferrer et al., 2006). USUJ, together with other environmental organi-
zations and left-wing parties, mobilized against this transfer through
street protests, political strategizing and mediatic campaigns. Their ef-
forts and political agency were such that during the socialist Zapatero
government the plans for the transfer were transformed by moving the
intake of the water transfer to the Jucar river mouth at the Mediterra-
nean Sea.
4.2. Smallholder irrigation in the Ecuadorian highlands: Strong collective
action, community grounding and alliance building
According to FAO (2010) the estimated irrigated area in Ecuador is 1,
500,000 ha out of which 466,000 ha, most of which are concentrated in
the Highlands, are managed by irrigation communities. Most irrigation
schemes are small and cover areas of up to a few hundred hectares on the
hilly slopes. Larger (formerly) state managed schemes, with a command
area of between a couple of hundred hectares and up to 10,000 ha also
dot the landscape, many of which are in the inter-Andean valleys that
interrupt this rugged terrain (Hoogesteger, 2013a, 2013b). Water ow
patterns, physical irrigation infrastructure and management practices
are locally dened and vary from irrigation system to irrigation system.
In the last thirty years an increasing number of irrigation systems have
been modernized with the support of external (state or NGO) technical
and nancial support. Modernization usually implies that irrigation
canals have been lined with cement structures or tubes, night storage
reservoirs have been built and some irrigation systems have been pres-
surized (through gravity) to enable sprinkler and -in some scattered
cases- drip irrigation (Hoogesteger, 2013b, 2015). Water allocation and
distribution, canal construction and maintenance and the resolution of
conicts are mostly managed at the village level (Manosalvas et al.,
2021) and in systems that compromise several villages within the irri-
gation community (Hoogesteger, 2013a). Most irrigation communities
are formally institutionalized and recognized by state agencies.
Before the 1900s, many of the smaller irrigation schemes were built,
taken into use, and dominated by landlords (or haciendas) who gave
water to peasants in exchange for labour. A minority were built and/or
maintained by ‘free communities’. During the agrarian reforms of the
1960s and 1970s, many villages acquired land
1
formerly owned by
hacienda and, with it, often also the irrigation systems and related water
1
The Ecuadorian agrarian reforms are very much debated as most haciendas
were able to keep their most productive land (often irrigated land) while
communities were given the marginal lands.
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
6
allocations (Janvry and Sadoulet, 1989). Where the technical possibil-
ities existed, villages engaged at supra-community level in struggles for
obtaining irrigation water through either the rehabilitation of formerly
hacienda owned irrigation systems or the construction of new ones
(often nanced by external agents and the state) (Boelens and Hoo-
gendam, 2002; Boelens and Hoogesteger, 2017).
Grounded in a strong tradition of village organization and ethnic
identity struggles, most irrigation systems have built-on, and strengthen
community through strategies of organization and control that include
the establishment of local councils and general assemblies for decision
making, lists for tracking participation, contributions and investments in
communal efforts and marking jurisdictional lines (Manosalvas et al.,
2021). These strategies have been termed ‘ vernacular statecraft’ by
Colloredo-Mansfeld (2009) and are expressed in irrigation management
as systems of water rights. Intrinsic to these water rights is the mobili-
zation of collective labour and other resources for the communal benet
(mingas). Mingas are compulsory for community members and are co-
ordinated by community leaders and community assemblies.
How water rights and the mobilization of collective action takes
place in each irrigation system varies greatly, not only from region to
region and from one irrigation system to another; but also in time. In
many irrigation systems where large commercial producers share the
waters with smallholders, there tends to be a constant struggle for the
control of both the water resources as well as the decision-making within
the connes of the irrigation communities (Mena-V´
asconez et al., 2016;
Hoogesteger et al., 2017). These struggles usually intensify in dryer
periods of the year, or when new crops and water demands change and
challenge the existing water rights systems.
At broader scales, irrigation communities are often well connected in
federations through which they defend their interests vis-`
a-vis state
agencies. The indigenous movement has been an important channel
through which irrigation communities have developed political agency
in the water domain at provincial and national level. Through the Na-
tional Confederation of Indigenous Peoples (CONAIE), which put water
high on its political agenda, many water related concerns have been
addressed (Boelens et al., 2015). In two provinces irrigation community
federations developed in the early 2000s (Hoogesteger, 2012) and at
national level a multistakeholder network of state agencies, NGOs and
irrigation communities, the Water Resources Forum, was created
(Hoogesteger, 2016; Goodwin, 2019). Through these federations and
networks, recognition and autonomy of irrigation communities has been
defended, investments in community irrigation development have been
put high on the political agenda, and spaces for dialogue and co-decision
making have been continuously sought (Hoogesteger, 2017; Dupuits,
2019; Dupuits et al., 2020). These same networks are an important
resource for irrigation communities to nd NGOs and state agencies’
support for the modernization or repair of their irrigation systems.
4.3. The Cambodian Preks: Sustaining irrigation in a context of water
abundance
Most village names in the mosaic landscape of the Cambodian Upper
Mekong delta start with the word prek, a term that means “connection”
in Khmer and is also used to designate the many earthen canals that
crisscross the oodplain. Preks connect the main rivers, the Mekong and
the Bassac, with their adjacent oodplain, which remains under water
for several months a year and are otherwise intensively cultivated
(Venot and Jensen, 2022). They date back to the late 19th century when
local community chiefs - later supported by the colonial authorities
(Barthelemy, 1915)- dug breaches across the river levees. As ood wa-
ters entered through these breaches, in the process increasing their
width, so did sediments that deposited in the oodplain. This progres-
sively raised land and extended the area that could be cultivated: elds
are slightly more elevated than the bed of the preks, whose hydrology is
tuned to river water levels. Today, more than 200 preks, spaced 500 m to
1 km apart along the Bassac and the Mekong rivers, structure one of the
most intensively cultivated landscape of Cambodia. Pumping water that
ows through the preks with small diesel pumps, thousands of small-
holders irrigate fruit trees and vegetables close to the river banks in
elds that are seldom ooded and are known as Chamkar. Smallholders
also produce rice in the low-lying areas that are ooded part of the year
and are known as boeungs. Local communities long organized themselves
around the management of water owing through the preks Land tenure
systems were for instance designed with a view towards equity in rela-
tion to the opportunities water ows and sedimentation dynamics pro-
vided (Siri, 1998), with smallholders being allocated long and narrow
stretches of land perpendicular to the preks in the Chamkar and square
elds in the Boeung. When the ood rose, irrigators collectively built a
temporary earthen dam at the tail end of the prek they used, where it
merged in the boeung, so that they could harvest their crops. This was
done under the authority of a prek chief (m`
eprek) and several adjacent
communities, using adjacent preks, sometimes came together hence
building a dam that would not only protect crops from the water coming
via the preks but also through the oodplain itself.
Preks have always had a key role in the local social fabric but their
management has evolved signicantly over time, especially in the last
two decades. Preks are now mostly envisioned and have been redesigned
with the view to intensify dry season cultivation through increased
water control. This has imperilled other uses and services such as
transport, sedimentation, sh population regeneration and ood miti-
gation (JICA, 1998; SOFRECO, 2018), that are central to local identities
and practices. The most visible aspect of these changes relates to the
deep excavation of preks that had progressively silted up and to the
construction of concrete sluice gates at their entrance, close to the main
rivers in the framework of externally funded development projects. In a
context of delayed ood peaks due to increase upstream water control
along the Mekong, these sluice gates are meant to store water for dry
season cultivation but are, above all, devices to establish the ruling party
as Cambodia’s caretaker (Venot and Jensen, 2022).
Infrastructural changes have come hand-in-hand with technocratic
institutional reforms centred on the establishment of “Prek User Com-
munities” following the model of Water User Associations (Ivars and
Venot, 2018). But the existing infrastructure affords little opportunity
for collective action in a context where individual access to irrigation is
the norm, and there are also few incentives for it as Prek User Com-
munities are mostly geared at levying fees for infrastructure mainte-
nance. The irrigation “communities” have, nonetheless, become a
largely bureaucratic and articial construct. There hasn’t been any
attempt at structuring them at a larger scale though they are meant to
oversee the management of adjacent and interlinked preks.
In today’s prek system, irrigation-related collective action remains
limited and the continued existence of the preks may rather have its roots
in a strong sense of (place) belonging, as village names indicate. Another
important element is a particular form of polity that hinges on the silent
(at least for the foreign researcher) activation of highly politicized cli-
entelist and patronage networks that ensure investments in irrigation
and other sectors by external actors.
4.4. Mountain irrigation in Tsangano, Mozambique: Building on local
collective action and networks
Diversions from mountain streams into earthen canals through
temporary diversion structures made of sandbags, logs, grass and soil
have a long history in East and Southern Africa, in some places dating
back from before colonial times (Adams, 1990; Bolding, 2004). This type
of irrigation has been referred to as furrow irrigation, whereby furrow
refers to the earthen main canal rather than a eld water application
method. In Mozambique this type of mountain irrigation likely goes
back to the early 20th century and expanded with colonial development.
Quick expansion to larger irrigated areas only happened after the end of
the civil war, from 1992 onwards (Beekman et al., 2014).
Characteristically, several irrigation systems take water from one
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
7
stream, sometimes additionally capturing water from side streams,
springs or neighboring catchments. These systems are interlinked,
whether indirectly through seepage and excess water losses reverting to
the river to be used downstream or through direct interlinking of several
furrow systems. These demonstrate a picture of a hydrologically inter-
connected water network (Van der Zaag et al., 2010), rather than a se-
ries of discrete irrigation systems. Periods of droughts or of above
average rainfall, often occurring in cycles of several years, lead to
shrinkage and growth of irrigated area. Apart from responses to climatic
variations, farmers dynamically recongure furrow irrigation practices
in response to changing demographic, political and market conditions,
physically changing the canals in time and space.
Tsangano District in the North-East of Tete Province, bordering on
Malawi, is an example of an area where the development of furrow
irrigation systems has quickly grown over a large area. Compared to
other hill furrow irrigation systems, those on the Tsangano plateau are
exceptional in their size, with some furrows irrigating command areas in
excess of 200 ha with over 100 members. The types of irrigation systems
that emerge in such an environment are varied and integrated with their
sociocultural contexts and can take three main organizational forms,
namely the former Portuguese systems, communal systems and family sys-
tems (Nkoka et al., 2014).
The cases presented in Nkoka et al. (2014) each show that the
establishment history and interlinking with wider sociocultural com-
munity structures of these systems exerts an important inuence on
current water distribution practices and water governance in general.
Communal irrigation systems heavily depended on knowledge that was
brought in by the Portuguese settlers or supplanted private colonial
irrigation systems. Regarding furrow systems in Manica province, show
that water rights are not only based on investments in infrastructure but
that they are often established through a mixture of investment, customs
and social networks while they are reproduced through the fullment of
obligations of which maintenance of infrastructure is only one aspect. In
the communal systems of Tsangano this led to a management structure in
which elders lay claims of hydraulic property on parts of the system.
They strategically use their authoritative positions to maintain those
rights. The other users participate in maintenance, but only gain use
rights, not control rights. There is some free-riding tendency, but often it
is penalized through exclusion from access to water.
Family irrigation systems are enterprises under the control of a single
patriarch, which does not mean that other (non-family) irrigators are
fully excluded. Creators of family systems succeed in structurally
excluding landowners who are located upstream of their own plots.
Owners exert authority through a social or patronage network devel-
oped through marriages. In this way family irrigation systems are part of
the social fabric of the community. As the ownership of these systems is
more exclusively claimed than in the other types of systems, participa-
tion in the construction and maintenance of the system is a more con-
tested domain. The owners openly try to limit other irrigators from
interacting with the irrigation infrastructure in order to fortify their
exclusive ownership. Through involving family members in mainte-
nance and management, patriarchs afrm the family ownership of the
property.
For the former Portuguese systems the original colonial investor/
constructor is no longer there and governance of the system has taken
shape depending on how the system was appropriated by its new users.
Some are being operated on a ‘state company model’ introduced upon
nationalization following independence, where capit˜
aes (captains) each
operate their own section. Often, these are sons or relations of the pre-
vious state company capit˜
aes. Where government intervention is
completely absent in the communal and family irrigation systems, here it
interfered by establishing an irrigation chief, though most of the decisions
are actually made by the irrigation elders, who are closely integrated in
the community authority structures. The tendency to try to free-ride on
maintenance obligations seems to be a continuation of labour practices
that were common on state and collective farms: nobody really felt
responsible. In former Portuguese systems, only those people who aspire to
take on authority pro-actively engage in maintenance activities and free-
riding by others seems to be routinely accepted.
The three types of irrigation systems each display different hydraulic
property regimes, related to their investment histories as well as to the
way in which they are integrated into the sociocultural fabric of the
communities. Investment in construction and maintenance alone is not
enough to guarantee authority and control. One needs supporting social
networks, which are actively built and maintained with reference to
other forms of authority, e.g. links to traditional authority, economic
power and seniority. Kin relations play a particularly important role in
the enforcing and transferring of hydraulic property claims.
These different furrow irrigation systems have not organized at
higher levels and their interactions with state agencies is very limited;
especially as many are considered illegal. In this sense, these systems
have been sustained by and large through local collective action and
community and as such fall under what Woodhouse et al. (2017) have
termed Farmer Led Irrigation Development; dened as: “a process
whereby farmers drive the establishment, improvement, and/or
expansion of irrigated agriculture…” (Veldwisch et al., 2019:2).
5. Comparing the four cases through the lens of communality
In this contribution we have set out the conceptualization of com-
munality by bringing together the notions of commons, community and
polity in relation to user managed irrigation system sustenance.
Comparative analysis of the four studied cases is presented in Table 1
and represented in Fig. 2.
The comparison of the four cases above shows that there are great
differences in how and through which mechanisms the irrigation sys-
tems are sustained. The ARJ shows how the irrigation system has been
sustained through a highly institutionalized commons in which collec-
tive action is coordinated by a well-established organization (the ARJ) in
which most of the operation and maintenance tasks are carried out by
hired technicians and personnel in a context of weakening community
ties. It also shows that the irrigation community has over the last two
centuries sustained a high level of polity in order to defend their orga-
nization and its historical water allocation in a basin with increased
water competition.
Irrigation communities in the Ecuadorian highlands show high levels
of commons, community and polity. Local organizations and institutions
which are often strongly linked to village affairs, institutions and iden-
tities (most notably place based village belonging, peasant and indige-
nous identities) play an important role in mobilizing collective action for
irrigation system operation and maintenance, as well as for the devel-
opment of polity through networking, political pressure, street protests
and mobilizations. Through polity many irrigation communities have
received support for the construction, modernization and maintenance
of their irrigation systems and have participated in a longstanding
struggle for recognition and a voice in decision making in broader water
governance affairs.
The preks in Cambodia show low levels of commons and high levels
of community while polity hinges on the activation of highly politicized
clientelist and patronage networks. A possible explanation for the low
levels of commons is the hydraulic characteristics of the system which
functions above all through individual practices (pumping) and while
requiring relatively little collective operation and maintenance to
function. This in spite of a strong place based identity in and among the
irrigators.
In Tzangano, Mozambique irrigation communities show some dif-
ferences but all have a strong sense of community. Sustenance of irri-
gation systems is done through different mixes of individual and
collective practices that are coordinated and controlled through distinct
institutions (family, village leaders, capitaes). All share low levels of
polity as the functioning of the irrigation networks depends on staying
‘invisible’ from State institutions.
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
8
6. Conclusions: Going beyond collective action through
communality
The analysis of the four case studies through the notion of commu-
nality shows that irrigation system sustenance does not hinge on col-
lective action alone. It conrms that irrigation systems sustenance rather
rests on hybrid action which consists of a mix of individual practices,
collective practices, and/or the engagement of external actors to ensure
the functioning and sustainability of the system. Our analysis shows that
communality offers a valuable entry point to analyze and better un-
derstand farmer managed irrigation systems sustenance in new ways
that go beyond the traditional institutional analysis. First it focuses on
hybrid action which importantly recognizes individual practices and
external interventions as well as collective action as mechanisms that
sustain irrigation systems. This opens up the analysis not only to formal
and informal normative frameworks and irrigation organizations, but
also to individual action, patronage and clientelist systems, family ties
and the importance of local (hydraulic) identity within irrigation com-
munities. The notion of polity brings in the analysis of the political
multi-scalar relations and strategies through which irrigation commu-
nities engage with external actors to defend their water allocations,
infrastructure and organizations vis-`
a-vis upcoming threats and/or to
fulll internal needs such as investments or technical expertise. These
insights open new lines of inquiry into how and through which mech-
anisms irrigation systems are sustained by irrigation communities. It
also invites for a renewed power and politics sensitive conceptualization
of common pool resource management (see Clement, 2010; Whaley,
2018). At the same time we consider that the notion of communality has
great potential to be enriched and expanded beyond its current
conceptualization importantly linking it to more quantitative research
approaches and its relations with technological, infrastructural, pro-
ductive, agronomical, economic and climatological factors that interact
with the above analyzed dimensions of communality. In doing so it can
become a tool to further explore the very different and diverse ways
through which irrigators are able to sustain their irrigation systems
amidst a constantly changing context.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare to have no conicts of interest related to the data
used for this manuscript nor with the concepts and ideas that are
expressed in it.
Data availability
All data used can be provided on request and has been referred to.
Table 1
Comparing the four analyzed cases through communality.
Case study Commons Community Polity
Acequia Real del
Júcar, Spain
- Commons threatened by competing water claims in
basin.
- Collective action for system operation and
maintenance mobilized by the formal organization
(ARJ) of the irrigation community mostly in the
form of hired technical staff.
- Normative framework highly institutionalized/
bureaucratized in Irrigation Community already for
centuries.
- Nested structure of local village irrigation
boards.
- Strong place identity.
- Long history of political mobilization and
engagement.
- Strong linkages and political agency with/in
government agencies at different scales.
- Strong linkages with neighboring IC’s through
USUJ.
- Strong national presence in FENACORE.
Smallholder
irrigation in the
Ecuadorian
Highlands
- Long history of struggles to acquire land and water.
- Collective water rights per IC
- Well established normative frameworks (water
rights) and often related organizations.
- Infrastructure sustained and managed through
collective action (mingas).
- Level of institutionalization dependent on size of
IC.
- Strong linkages IC with communities.
- Water & irrigation often part of village
affairs.
- Strong place based identity with village and
ICs.
- Strong linkages with indigenous, peasant
and sometimes religious identities.
- Often well connected to other ICs through
provincial federations or the indigenous
movement.
- Able to mobilize technical support from NGOs
and State agencies.
- Great capacity for mobilizations and street
protests.
Preks, Cambodia - Commons threatened by individualization of water
access and increased agricultural differentiation.
- Bureaucratic, externally, enforced, organizational
form of participation and management
- Irrigation infrastructure affording little scope for
regular/frequent collective action
- Strong place based identity and sense of
belonging
- Prek as structuring element of social life
- Activation of politicized patronage networks
- No nested institutional organizational forms
Mountain irrigation
in Tsangano,
Mozambique
- Access to land and water within systems strongly
depends on hydraulic property relations,
moderated by original investments and recurrent
labour contributions for system maintenance.
- In family systems, the original patriarch denies
newcomers from contributing to maintenance, so as
to withhold them from a claim on a share of the
water.
- Strong role for traditional village leaders in
irrigation governance
- In former Portuguese systems the
community is formed by descendants of
former labour force, including the foremen
(capitaes) that have a strong sense of shared
identity.
- Irrigation leaders’ authority also links to
outside the irrigation system, to traditional
authority, economic power and seniority.
- No connections, networks and alliances or
protests above the level of single irrigation
systems. Rather the continued functioning of
the irrigation networks depends on staying
‘invisible’ from State institutions.
Fig. 2. Comparing the four cases in the framework of communality (own
elaboration).
J. Hoogesteger et al.
Agricultural Systems 204 (2023) 103552
9
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