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Egypt’s Minia Governorate lies 250km south of Cairo
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“Mommy,
he made me do it!” “No Mommy, I only told him to do it. Now it’s broken
and it’s all his fault!”
For
some odd reason, that recurrent scene that happens between my children when
something goes wrong in the house came jumping to mind while I was attending a
workshop for farmers and irrigation engineers in Upper Egypt’s Minia
University, some 250 km south of Cairo.
The
workshop was part of a research project led by Dr. Mohammed A. Kishk, Director
of Minia University’s Service Laboratory for Soil, Water & Plant Analysis.
The International Development Research Center (IDRC) backed project has been
studying the effectiveness of Water Users Associations (WUAs) in Minia in
managing the governorate’s irrigation issues.
Of
course, if I were the one in charge, my immediate reaction would have been,
“All of you go to your rooms, and don’t you dare let me hear a peep out of
you!”
Luckily
enough for the bickering farmers and irrigation engineers, I’m not their
mother. Dr. Kishk’s coolheaded approach was quite different. “We’re not
here to put the blame on each other,” he emphasized. “We want to find a way
to make the situation better.”
An
Organizational Revolution?
Water
Users Associations were first implemented in Egypt in 1988 as part of the
Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources’ Irrigation Improvement
Project (IIP). The project was comprised of a physical component and an
organizational component.
The
physical component consisted of improving the irrigation process at the level of
the main and branch canals, all the way down to the mesqa; the final
irrigation canal that directly feeds the farmers’ lands. Mesqas served
by the project were elevated above the level of the land itself, and a single
diesel pump appointed at the head of each mesqa to lift water to it from
the lower branch irrigation canal. This ensured a continuous flow of water
throughout the whole mesqa for as long as the pump was working. The mesqas
then underwent a process of renovation, where they were either lined with
concrete slabs or replaced with Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) piping that was buried
underground, providing more land space for the farmers to plant on.
The
organizational component of the IIP was aimed at encouraging the formation of
Water Users Associations; non-governmental associations of farmers at each mesqa
to organize the irrigation process, to maintain the mesqas and the diesel
pump, and to settle conflicts that might arise between farmers about water
management.
The
bickering farmers and irrigation engineers make it obvious that this aim has not
yet been fully realized, to say the least.
Muhammad
Tusson only discovered he was the WUA treasurer of his mesqa in the
village of Mantoot in Minia Governorate when the Egyptian government decided to
ask the farmers to pay for the diesel pump it gave them several years back as
part of the IIP in their village. The farmers had assumed the pump was a grant
from the government. Tusson was asked to pay up from the irrigation fees he was
supposedly collecting from his WUA general assembly members.
“I
hadn’t collected anything from anyone,” he proclaimed during the one-day
workshop in Minia University. According to WUA by-laws, it is the treasurer’s
job to collect the fees for operating the diesel pump from farmers wanting to
irrigate their lands. A receipt is signed and then taken to the pump operator.
In reality, however, it is the diesel pump operator who collects these fees in
most villages.
This
is where most of the problems with WUAs have arisen. “The whole idea behind
establishing WUAs in Egypt was getting the farmers to participate in the
management of their own resources,” explained Kishk. “But that isn’t what
happened,” he added.
Instead
of farmers electing board members for their WUA, what happened in many cases was
that the local irrigation engineer – a government employee – appointed the
board members himself, who signed the necessary papers not fully comprehending
the concept of WUAs in the first place. The pump operator, who should be an
elected WUA board member, was also appointed by the local irrigation engineer,
and provided with a diesel pump which he was told he would be held fully
accountable for.
This
is exactly why Tusson found himself in a big barrel of trouble. Tusson had
signed the papers saying he was the treasurer of his WUA, but was not informed
of his duties, nor was he provided with a receipt-book. Tusson and other members
of the WUA board also did not receive training on accounting or on holding
meetings and keeping minutes. The whole concept of WUA was foreign to them, and
their only comprehension of what a WUA was, was that of the diesel pump
operator’s duty to manage the irrigation schedule for the farmers and collect
the fees.
“The
system was forced on the farmers. The Ministry [of Irrigation] doesn’t want to
give up its role in the lives of the people,” said Kishk.
Khalaf
Shafeeq, the local water advisor appointed by the Ministry of Irrigation and
Water Resources (MIWR) to advise WUAs in Tusson’s village, however, places the
blame on Tusson and his fellow-farmers. “What gets me really angry is that
Tusson and the other members of his WUA board are educated men,” he said.
“How could they have signed the papers appointing them as WUA board members,
without understanding what they were signing?” asked Shafeeq in frustration.
Collecting
Information
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Pumps lift irrigation waters from the lower canal into the
mesqa
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One
of the first research studies to evaluate WUAs in Egypt was another IDRC funded
project that presented its final report in May 2001. The project aimed at
forming a large database of information on WUAs in the country.
“There
is a need to revisit WUAs in most regions by appropriate authorities aiming at
enhancing the involvement of individual members of WUAs in the affairs of their
respective associations,” recommended the report conducted by the American
University in Cairo’s Desert Development Center (DDC).
However,
“WUAs are a solution to Egypt’s irrigation problems,” commented an
optimistic Dr. Mohamed Al-Sabbah, project team leader and then director of the
DDC. Al-Sabbah believes that WUAs have the ability to increase water use
efficiency in the country.
The
DDC study, which covered seven regions all over Egypt, claimed that increased
yields of maize, cotton, rice, and wheat of 25 percent, 21 percent, 10 percent,
and 9 percent respectively resulted from the establishment of WUAs in these
regions. The study also discovered that crop yields didn’t vary significantly
between the head of the mesqa and the tail end, which the researchers
believe is due to an increase in water equity along the mesqa. The result
was an increase in the farmers’ net income from major crops, the study
revealed.
It
was this component of the DDC study, however, that provoked Minia University’s
Mohammed Kishk to conduct further studies on WUAs in Egypt.
Kishk
believes that the DDC study’s insistence on considering “WUAs [as]
synonymous with IIP” resulted in their failure to assess whether better water
efficiency was resulting from the physical or the organizational components of
the project.
“There
is no evidence that there is better water efficiency as a result of WUAs in
Egypt,” said Kishk.
Participatory
Approach
In
order to assess the farmers’ understanding of the different components of the
IIP, researchers in the Minia project used a Participatory Development
Communication tool known as photo-novella. Twenty men and women in some of
Minia’s villages were given a camera and asked to take photographs of things
that depict their understanding of the components of the IIP. “They mostly saw
the IIP as a project for lining canals,” said Kishk. “The organizational
component of the project didn’t appear in any of the photographs,” he said.
The
participatory approach has been an important component all along in the Minia
study. “These meetings are for exchanging opinions,” Kishk declared in the
beginning of one of several workshops held for farmers and irrigation engineers.
“We want to tell you about some ideas, and see what you think about them,”
he said.
Kishk
explained that the group meetings were very successful. “They resulted in good
communication between the researchers, the farmers, and the irrigation
engineers,” he said. A wide range of issues related to the IIP and WUAs
evolved from those conversations, and attempts to find solutions to problems
raised were also made, Kishk explained.
Will
Women Ever Be a Second W in WUAs?
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“Once I tried to comment on a problem, but a man with influence and authority told me to ‘just wait until we talk about collecting garbage and we will allow you to talk,’” said a woman in rural Egypt. |
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Significant
numbers of women interviewed in both the DDC and Minia studies expressed
negative feelings towards becoming members of WUAs on their mesqas.
The
DDC report explained that customary gender roles in the village “still
conceive irrigation management as work of men, both in terms of the work of
cleaning canals, and in distributing water.” The Minia study elaborated by
saying that the women they surveyed saw themselves better equipped to handle
such issues as water pollution, birth control and family planning, representing
other women, and cleaning the environment.
Women
interviewed in the DDC study complained that when they had occasion to attend a
WUA meeting, the men would not allow them to speak. One woman interviewed went
so far as to say that “once I tried to comment on a problem, but a man with
influence and authority told me to ‘just wait until we talk about collecting
garbage and we will allow you to talk,’” she said.
Women
are actually seen by some of the men in their villages to be part of the problem
when it comes to maintaining the irrigation canals and mesqas. Women
frequently resort to washing clothes, dirty dishes, and animals in the
irrigation canals, in addition to throwing solid waste along their sides, said
the DDC report.
Important
Questions
The
principal investigator of the Minia project, Dr. Mohammed Abdel Aal from Cairo
University’s Faculty of Agriculture, has a critical view of the current status
of WUAs in the country based on his research. “People will continue to
irrigate whether there are WUAs or not; conflicts or not. Irrigation and
cultivation will continue; it’s a basic fact of life. But we are intervening
for more efficiency. The important question to ask here is have we accomplished
that or not?” asked Abdel Aal.
“It’s
a mistake to compel organizations at the grassroots level to implement
developmental approaches that are not yet implemented at other levels,” hinted
Abdel Aal. “Don’t talk about democracy of management and it’s not
happening elsewhere; governance of irrigation and its not happening elsewhere.
This is called uneven development,” said Abdel Aal.
IDRC
project organizer for the Minia study, Dr. Lamia El-Fattal, has similar
misgivings. “Project results seem to indicate that WUAs in Minia have
succeeded in reducing conflict among water users along the same water supply
system by providing sufficient amounts of water to farmers along a canal at
the right time,” she said. “However, the study also shows that despite the
fact that these WUAs have been in existence for the past 15 years, farmers still
do not demonstrate ownership of these associations. Consequently, whether they
are viable, sustainable institutional entities in their current form is
certainly debatable,” she concluded.
Minia’s
Dr. Mohamed Kishk, however, refuses to give up on the positive outcomes that
could arise from properly implementing the WUA concept. Drinking the dark tea
that citizens of Upper Egypt cannot do without, and smoking cigarettes after
lunching together in Minia Sporting Club, Kishk talks with the farmers and
irrigation engineers at the conclusion of that overwhelming one-day workshop.
“Let’s
do what the by-laws say we should do and see what happens,” he told the group.
“Let’s start up a WUA from the very beginning, do the necessary training,
call for a meeting of the general assembly, buy our own WUA pump, and see how it
works out,” he said.
The
optimistic farmers stand up, give Dr. Kishk a hearty handshake, and return to
their villages with hope filling their hearts that tomorrow will be a better
day. And Muhammed Tusson of Mantoot village leaves, his face covered from ear to
ear with a huge, satisfied smile.
*
This is an edited version of an as yet
unpublished article commissioned by the International Development Research
Center (IDRC) as a case study of its People, Land and Water projects in the
Middle East. It has been published with the IDRC’s permission.
**
Nadia El-Awady is IslamOnline.net's managing science editor. Nadia won
first prize of the 2004 WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene for All) Media
Award for her article The
Nile and its People: What Goes Around Comes Around. She is also the chair of
the World Federation of Science Journalists’ program committee and the
president of the Arab Association of Science Journalists. She has a bachelor's
degree in medicine from Cairo University and is currently studying for a masters
degree in journalism and mass communications at the American University in
Cairo. You can reach her at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
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