The Political Ecology
of Irrigation Management
in the Blue Nile Basin:
Impacts of Global Environmental Policies
on Local Adaptation in the Koga Irrigation Project,
Ethiopia
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of:
MAGISTER ARTIUM
CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY - VÖLKERKUNDE
Faculty of Arts and Humanities - Philosophische Fakultät
University Cologne - Universität zu Köln
Presented by: Sina Marx
Supervised by: Prof. Michael Bollig
sina.marx@gmail.com
michael.bollig@uni-koeln.de
A thesis on
how people make canals & canals make people
i
I hereby declare that I have written this thesis without any help from others and without the use
of documents and aids other than those stated above. I have mentioned all used sources and I
have cited them correctly according to established academic citation rules. The same is true for
tables, maps and figures. The thesis in this form or in any other form has not been submitted for
any other examination until date.
Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich diese Magisterarbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als
die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt habe. Die Stellen meiner Arbeit, die dem
Wortlaut oder dem Sinn nach anderen Werken entnommen sind, habe ich in jedem Fall unter
Angabe der Quelle als Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht. Dasselbe gilt sinngemäß für Tabellen,
Karten und Abbildungen. Diese Arbeit hat in dieser oder einer ähnlichen Form noch nicht im
Rahmen einer anderen Prüfung vorgelegen.
______________________________________________
Köln, den 29.08.2011
Sina Marx
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all I would like to thank the farmers of Gojam, who dedicated their time and energy to
answering all my questions, and the Koga project team, all of whom have been tremendously
helpful and made me feel at home in such a short time. Betam Amesegenallu to all of you!
A special thanks goes to Dr. Irit Eguavoen for her helpful advice throughout the research and
writing phase and to Weyni Tesfai, my research colleague, without whom the time in Ethiopia
would not nearly have been as rewarding. I would also like to thank Prof. Michael Bollig for
encouraging me to engage with a political ecology analysis.
Last but not least my gratefulness goes to my friends and family for their support.
iii
CONTENT
List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Acronyms and Glossary of Terms ............................................................................. vii
I
INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE ....................................................................................... 1
II
THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL CONSIDERATIONS .................................................... 3
2.1
Political Ecology ........................................................................................................ 4
2.1.1
2.2
Discourses and Policies ...................................................................................... 6
The Political Sociology of Water Resources Management ......................................... 7
2.2.1
Institutions in Water Management ...................................................................... 9
III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY ............................................................ 10
3.1
3.2
Methodology ........................................................................................................... 11
3.1.1
Preparation and Field Situation......................................................................... 11
3.1.2
Data Collection and Analysis ........................................................................... 12
Research Questions ................................................................................................. 15
IV PEASANTS AND STATE INTERVENTION IN ETHIOPIA ..................................................... 16
4.1
V
Irrigation and State Intervention .............................................................................. 18
THE KOGA PROJECT: AN INTRODUCTION .................................................................... 21
5.1
Location and Segmentation ..................................................................................... 21
5.2
Population and Settlement ....................................................................................... 22
5.3
Land Scarcity and Fragmentation ............................................................................ 24
5.4
Planning and Construction: A Short History of Delays ............................................ 24
VI THE POLITICS OF WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN KOGA................................... 28
6.1
The Global Politics of Water: The New Oil, Dams and IWRM ................................ 28
6.1.1
The Global Politics of Climate Change and Water ............................................ 30
6.2
Interstate Hydropolitics: The Struggle for the Nile ................................................... 32
6.3
The Politics of Water Policy in the Context of Sovereign States ............................... 35
6.4
The Everyday Politics of Water Resources Management ......................................... 39
6.4.1
Farmers............................................................................................................ 39
6.4.3
Project Management and Street Level Bureaucrats ........................................... 42
iv
VII DISPARITIES WITHIN ................................................................................................... 44
7.1
Women and Water .................................................................................................. 44
7.1.1
Women, Ploughing and Participation ............................................................... 44
7.1.2
Women and Domestic Water ............................................................................ 46
7.1.3
Including Women in Decision Making: Hit-or-Miss? ....................................... 47
7.2
Relocatees and Hosts ............................................................................................... 48
7.3
Spatial Marginalization ........................................................................................... 50
7.4
VIII
8.1
7.3.1
Up and Downstream Communities ................................................................... 51
7.3.2
Head and Tail End Communities ...................................................................... 52
7.3.3
"Beneficiaries" and "Non-Beneficiaries" .......................................................... 54
Conclusion: Institutions in Irrigation and the Iteration of Influence ........................... 54
CONFLICTS BETWEEN ........................................................................................... 57
Farmers' and Officials' Priorities of Problems ........................................................... 58
8.1.1
Socio-Economic Factors .................................................................................. 59
8.1.2
Technical and Organizational Factors ............................................................... 64
8.2
Money for Water? Self-Financing and Cost Recovery ............................................. 65
8.3
Priests and the Profanity of Commercial Production ................................................ 68
8.4
Cooperative or Association? Bureaucratic Tugs-of-War........................................... 69
8.5
Conclusion: Professional Panacea and Weapons of the Weak ................................... 74
IX CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK ....................................................................................... 76
X
LITERATURE ................................................................................................................. 79
XI ANNEX: DATA COLLECTION SHEET ............................................................................. 89
v
List of Figures
Fig. 1:
Dams in Ethiopia...................................................................................................... 19
Fig. 2:
Location of the research site ..................................................................................... 21
Fig. 3:
Project area .............................................................................................................. 22
Fig. 5:
Depiction of the canal system ................................................................................... 26
Fig. 4:
Cross drainage under construction ............................................................................ 26
Fig. 6:
Climate projections for Ethiopia ............................................................................... 36
Fig. 7:
Distribution of people affected by natural disasters in Africa, 1975 - 2001 ................ 37
Fig. 8:
Rainfall, GDP and agricultural GDP for Ethiopia...................................................... 38
Fig. 9:
Dominant crops under the rainfed system ................................................................. 40
Fig. 10: Elderly woman fetching water from shallow well ..................................................... 47
Fig. 11: Seasonal and spatial distribution of Malaria cases in vicinity to the Koka reservoir ... 51
Fig. 12: Principles of cost recovery ....................................................................................... 66
Fig. 13: Proportions of produce in the proposed farming models............................................ 66
Fig. 14: Normal Professionalism ........................................................................................... 75
List of Tables
Table 1: Population data for the command area ...................................................................... 22
Table 2: Overview of construction process ............................................................................. 25
Table 3: Irrigation and economic indicators of Ethiopia and Egypt ......................................... 33
Table 4: Oxen ownership in the command area ...................................................................... 41
Table 5: Development of membership in the KIC ................................................................... 53
Table 6: Literacy of population aged over 10 in Amhara Region 2001 .................................... 55
Table 7: Farmers' and officials' priorities of problems ............................................................ 58
Table 8: Ownership of scheme as perceived by users ............................................................. 60
Table 9: Proposed cost recovery in relation to estimated income ............................................ 67
vi
List of Acronyms and Glossary of Terms
(Variations in spelling of words are due to different translations of Amharic characters e.g.
Addis Abeba, Addis Abbaba, Addis Ababa)
Abbay
Ethiopian term for the Blue Nile
AfDB
African Development Bank
ANRS
Amhara National Regional State
BoARD
Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development
CPB
Cooperative Promotion Bureau
CSA
Central Statistical Agency
DA
Development Agent, ~ agricultural extension officer
Derg
~ "The Committee", common term to refer to the Ethiopian socialist regime in
power between 1974 and 1991
ESE
Ethiopian Seed Enterprise
ETB
Ethiopian Birr, currency of Ethiopia
FAO
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Farenji
~ foreigner
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Got
~ village
GWP
Global Water Partnership
HR
Human Resources
Idir
~ burial association
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IWMI
International Water Management Institute
IWRM
Integrated Water Resources Management
IWUA
Irrigation Water User Association
Kebele
peasant association during the Derg regime, now sub-district, smallest
administrative unit in Ethiopia, plural: kebelewotch
Ketena
zone i.e. irrigation unit corresponding to night-storage reservoirs
Kilil
one of nine administrative regions in Ethiopia, plural: kililoch
KIC
Koga Irrigation Cooperative
KIDMO
Koga Irrigation and Drainage Management Office
masl
metres above sea level
Meher
main crop season between June and October
MMD
Mott McDonald, British consultant firm
MOM
Management, Operation and Maintenance (see also O&M)
MoWR
Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resources
NAPA
National Adaptation Programme of Action
vii
NBI
Nile Basin Initiative
NMA
Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency
O&M
Operation and Maintenance (see also MOM)
PMU
Project Management Unit
POU
Project Operation Unit
qt.
quintal, Ethiopian unit of weight, 1 quintal equals 100kg
SWHISA
Sustainable Water Harvesting and Institutional Strengthening in Amhara
Teff
Ethiopian cereal, used to produce the national staple food injeera, a fermented
bread
Timad
also timado, local term for pair of oxen, synonym for share cropping
arrangement (in other contexts also measurement for land, approx. 0.25 ha)
UNFCCC
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
WB
World Bank
WCW
World Commission on Water in the 21st Century
Woreda
~ district, plural: woredawotch
WUA
Water User Association
WWC
World Water Council
WWDSE
Water Works Design and Supervision Enterprise
viii
I
INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE
Over the last twenty years water has been put on top of the global environmental agenda. Not
much of an issue in the so-called Earth Summit in Rio, 1992, water is nowadays framed to be
"the new oil", both in terms of scarcity and political relevance. However, in contrast to oil,
water is not replaceable; there is no substitute for water in its vital importance to humans and
the ecosystem.
Coming along with water's new salience as a precious resource is a growing influence of
global politics on water management. Paradigms and policies agreed upon in global fora are
passed down to be implemented on the local, national and regional level. The process leads to
an increasing embeddedness of water management into a broader political and economic
system.
This poses the question of how such newly formed global policies, institutions and discourses
offer action alternatives for stakeholders involved in water management.
Which elements can be used by actors to follow their interests and which do constrain their
actions? Who gains and who loses considering the power relations associated with the access
to and control of resources? And what impacts do these processes have on the resource itself?
The Nile Basin is a good example. The control of its water has been subject to political
struggles that were dominated by its downstream riparians for much of the last centuries constraining the room for maneuvre of other nation states on the banks of the world's longest
river. However, globalisation and a growing international influence in the domain of river
management necessitated a more integrated approach to accommodate the interests of
upstream countries like Ethiopia. With this process being amplified by the growing
prominence of climate change as another global issue of environmental debates, the building
of infrastructure for water storage to mitigate the impacts of rainfall variability has gained
more political legitimacy. Donor financing for the construction of dams in the course has
become more readily available for the Ethiopian government. This process has a direct impact
on the lives of Ethiopian farmers:
While water management has always been of vital importance to humans in terms of
livelihoods and agriculture, ever since the formation of nation states the centralized control
over water has been one of intervention, resulting in the transformation of people's lives, both
voluntarily and by force. This includes the resettlement of countless people for the
construction of dams, forced labour in irrigation schemes and a shift from subsistence to
commercial agriculture for market economies.
The study of such complex dynamics that link actors and institutions involved in the
management of a natural resource like water must be located at the interface of natural and
1
social sciences. Acknowledging the political nature of resource management, the approach
taken in this study, namely political ecology, comes from such an interdisciplinary crossing
point. The history of the scientific debate on resource management in the "Third World" is
briefly outlined in chapter two to place the approach of political ecology in its broader context.
A second approach is then introduced, the political sociology of water resources management,
to narrow the resource debate down to the issue of water and, more specifically, irrigation.
In the third section a synthesis of the two approaches is suggested as a framework to facilitate
a comprehensive and focused multiscalar actor-based analysis of water resources management.
With the research focus given, the research objectives that arise from the combination of the
theoretical approaches and the case study are formulated in chapter three. Moreover, the
methodology that was applied to collect the respective data is discussed.
A brief review of the available literature on the relationship between the Ethiopian state and
the peasantry will be given in chapter four. This should serve as a general introduction to the
issue of political intervention within resource use in Ethiopia, a topic that has been widely
covered by scientists from both anthropological and other social sciences perspectives. An
overview of state intervention for irrigation follows.
The empirical research results, which focused on an irrigation scheme in the Ethiopian Blue
Nile Basin, will be presented in chapters five, six, and seven that constitute the main part of
this study. Section five identifies the actors involved in the implementation of irrigation in the
Koga project. This part is structured according to the scales of action within water resources
politics: the global, international, state-level and local dimensions are described. This includes
an introduction of the relevant institutions and stakeholders as well as their interests and
agency on the respective level of politics.
Part six, "Disparities Within", concentrates on the collision of interests within the local
dimension of irrigation politics. The different groups of actors within the local communities
and the inequalities in the allocation of power between them are pointed out with regard to
irrigation management. The analysis reveals that the more influential actors within the
communities were able to strengthen their position with the introduction of irrigation while
less powerful groups are often being left out of decision making processes.
Chapter seven, "Conflicts Between", deals with the contradictory interests of actors on
different political levels. The discussion of state intervention and farmers' reactions to it is
resumed, looking at the difference between the interests of farmers and local level bureaucrats
in irrigation. Their perceptions and priorities are compared and the effects of the resulting
conflict of interests are depicted. Also, conflicting interests between government agencies,
active on a local level, and their relation to policies designed at a national level are discussed,
as well as the clash between obligations resulting from irrigation and religious duties. This part
shows that the conflicts between actors of different political levels are rather caused by
changing power relations than by the reinforcement of these. In contrast to the situation of
2
power reproduction, in which differing interests are not openly addressed, the shift of power
relations leads to open conflicts.
The concluding chapter summarizes the findings from the case study and discusses them with
regard to the research questions. In particular, the interlinkages between the different political
domains will be highlighted therein. The analysis reveals a picture of dynamic policy
negotiations on all political levels in which the newly ascending global political domain in
water plays an increasing role, both enabling and complicating actors' ability to handle
irrigation in their interest. The case study shows that through such negotiations a shift in power
relations can take place with regards to resource control and management. However, the
reproduction of power and marginalization on the local level is also partly a consequence of
such global policies.
II
THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL CONSIDERATIONS
The study of human-environment relations and the focus on resource management practices
have a long tradition in anthropological research. In the introduction to Carpenter and Dove's
reader on Environmental Anthropology (2008), the authors point out that:
"The cross cultural study of society and environment has ancient antecedents, the
earliest of which were prompted by the observation that different types of
environments are often inhabited by different types of people, which led to the
invoking of the former to explain the latter" (p.1).
Accordingly, early accounts to the explanation of societies by means of their natural
surroundings focused (a) on the conceptual dichotomy between nature and society, (b) on
differences between societies and (c) on the environment as the explanatory variable to these
differences (cf. ibid). The explanation of their connection was mostly one of a simple causeeffect-relationship (c b), which dominated the field far into the 19th century.
But with the emerging 20th century, environmental determinism started to be increasingly
contested within anthropology and a more complex understanding of the relationship was
developed. In his book, "Theory of Culture Change", Julian Steward (1955) coined the term
cultural ecology, which henceforward materialized as a distinctive field especially in
American anthropology. His writings, explaining culture as the product of human adaptation to
the environment through the organization of labour, had an enduring influence on later work
on the subject. However, two major developments changed the focus in studies of humanenvironment relations in the second half of the century:
Firstly, the focus shifted "to the asking of the reverse question, not how does the environment
affect society but how, over time, does human activity affect, and especially degrade, the
environment" (Carpenter & Dove 2008: 2).
3
Secondly, with increasing globalization the focus on local level analysis alone became
insufficient and it was acknowledged that cultural as well as ecological processes on the local
level were part of a broader set of both political and economic factors (cf. Peet & Watts 1993,
1996, Bryant & Bailey 1997).
These developments and their subsequent discussion at the interface of anthropology, human
geography and ecology gave rise to current political ecology approaches and will be described
in the forthcoming section.
2.1 Political Ecology
As described above the paradigm shift to "the reverse question" of how humans affect the
environment has largely been one of degradation. The 1960s and 70s brought about the
narrative that population growth coupled with mismanagement of natural resources by local
communities was the primary cause of environmental degradation in the so-called Third
World1 (Neumann 2005: 26f). Closely linked with such neo-Malthusian thinking was the
notion that the needs of an increasing population could be accommodated through technical
and managerial improvements. As a consequence, classical development approaches aimed at
implementing an agenda of technical and managerial adjustments in Third World countries to
overcome their environmental problems with the help of specialists such as civil engineers or
agronomists. Criticizing the neglect of social, economic, and political structures that affect
resource use and its effect on the environment, counterdrafts to such technocentric assumptions
about the dynamics of degradation gave direction to early political ecologist writings 2. To put
it in a nutshell, Political ecology "began with the premise that ecological problems were at
their core social and political problems, not technical or managerial" (ibid: 28) and thus,
resulted in the notion that "human transformation of natural ecosystems cannot be understood
without consideration of the political and economic structures and institutions within which the
transformations are embedded" (ibid: 9). The relationship between society and nature is ergo
dialectic, revealing political ecology's roots in Marxist political economy 3. Drawing on
developments in world-systems theory, dependency theory and peasant studies, environmental
degradation was now contextualized as both an outcome and cause of economic and social
conditions inherent in a capitalist market system (cf. Blaikie 1985, Bryant 1997). Accordingly,
1
Publications reflecting such degradationist discourse include "The Population Bomb" by Ehrlich
(1968), "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Hardin (1968) and "The Sinking Ark by" Myers (1979).
2
e.g. Franke & Chasin (1980), Blaikie (1985), Hecht (1985)
3
A comprehensive discussion of the historical context, in which political ecology evolved, would go
beyond the scope of this study. For a detailed contextualization cf. Bryant & Blaikie (1997), Watts
(2000), Robbins (2004) and Neumann (2005). For a positioning of the approach within the New
Ecologies cf. Biersack & Greenberg (2006) or Scoones (1999), and for broader developments in
environmental anthropology see Carpenter & Dove (2008).
4
often cited as the foundational definition for political ecology, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987)
state that:
„The phrase ‘political ecology' combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly
defined political economy. Together, this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic
between society and land-based resources and also within classes and groups within
society itself" (p. 17).
The denaturalization of nature and the social, economic and political circumstances, under
which environmental conditions evolve, reveals them to be an outcome of negotiated power
relations. Central to this assumption is the concept of marginalization. Blaikie and Brookfield
argue that economic and socio-political marginalization can result in ecological
marginalization, and vice versa, for instance when underprivileged peasants have to farm land
that is not suitable for cultivation. This might result in a further degradation of the land and in
turn lead to even more poverty and political exclusion - "a vicious circle" (ibid: 23).
To identify the underlying reasons of such marginalization one is to look for "chains of
explanation" (ibid: 27), that is to trace the causes upwards in scale and backwards in time. In
doing so, the historical economic and political embeddedness of environmental conditions into
national and global structures are revealed.
Thus, environmental conditions are never inevitable or "natural" (cf. Robbins 2004: 12), which
has rather far-reaching consequences - both epistemologically and politically.
But, assuming politics to always be an inherent or even the most important factor, one runs the
risk of petition principii or "begging the question" as Vayda & Walters (1999) caution against.
This situation of logical fallacy is caused by focusing on a set of assumed criteria, taken for
granted to be relevant, and so missing out on other factors and their complex interrelations.
They argue that the apolitical ecologies of the 1960s resulted in an overcompensation to now
produce "politics without ecology" which use the label of political ecology although their
actual object of research is the political negotiations over natural resources. Provided that this
is a valid point of criticism, it could also be applied to the study at hand4. However, contrary to
this stands a line of thought calling for more politics within political ecology and for more
concise focus on the discursive construction of such politics (cf. Peet & Watts 1996).
Representatives of this approach claim that only by consequently integrating politics into
questions of resource use and access, one is to achieve "sensitivity to the panoply of political
forms - movements, domestic struggles over property and rights, contestations within state
bureaucracies - and the way in which claims are made, negotiated, and contested" (ibid: 11).
This study rather follows the second school of thought, arguing that discursive approaches to
the analysis of environment and development shall be central in political ecology. Scholars of
4
The problems of both petition principii and politics without ecology will be discussed in relation to this
thesis in section 3.1.2 on data analysis.
5
this line engage in studies of eco-governmentality to examine the role of institutions and how,
through the use of expert knowledge as it is produced by epistemic communities, an
environment is constructed that can then be "treated" through various forms of management
and intervention.
"This area of political ecology includes research on the sociology of science and
knowledge, on the history of institutions and policy on environment and development
and, most importantly, on the globalisation of environmental discourses in relation to
‘new languages and institutional relations of global environmental governance and
management'" (Peet and Watts, 1996: 11, cited in Adger et al. 2000: 1).
As these are also central to the present study, the concepts of discourses and institutions will
briefly be discussed in the next sections to shed light on how they impact on both global
environmental politics as well as the people and ecosystems affected by those.
2.1.1 Discourses and Policies
"Nowhere is the power of policy narratives and paradigms illustrated more clearly
than in environmental planning in developing countries".
Hoben (1995: 1008)
Following the work by Michel Foucault (1980) on power and knowledge, the 1980s brought
about a paradigm shift in both social sciences and the humanities, inflicting a whole series of
works on the issue of discourses.
Accordingly, the ‘second generation' of political ecologists with their growing interest in the
construction of knowledge, left behind the structuralism of neo-Marxist theories. Escobar
(2010) describes this current of political ecology as engaged with those "epistemological
debates fostered by the theoretical positions known as constructivism and anti-essentialism"
(p.91). One of the most important changes in the field was the resultant shift away from
finding underlying political and economic 'structures' that result in environmental degradation.
Post-structural political ecologies rather try to understand how the unequal distribution of
power, and the construction of knowledge that mediates human-environmental interactions, are
reproduced as ecological changes on different political scales.
The term "discourse" is hard to get by and can have numerous different meanings depending
on its definition (Mills 2004). Without going into detail on the other possible meanings,
discourse will here be defined as a set of ideas, concepts and behaviour through which
meaning is given to certain phenomena (Blommaert 2005, Mills 2004). It is essential that
discourses "differ with the kinds of institutions and social practices in which they take shape,
and with the positions of those who speak and those whom they address" (MacDonell 1986: 1).
Shore and Wright (1997) point out that language as a social construct involves what Grillo
calls "the politics of discursive practice" (Grillo 1989: 17, cited from Shore and Wright 1997:
14). Therefore "a key concern is who has the ‘power to define': dominant discourses work by
6
setting up the terms of reference by disallowing or marginalising alternatives" (ibid).
Consequently, discourses are both a cause and an outcome of power relations. Further, they
point out the connection between discourses and policies: "policies enable this to happen by
setting a political agenda and giving institutional authority to one or a number of overlapping
discourses" (ibid).
The interlinkages between policies and discourses are a central issue of this study: how
discourses give authority to certain policies and vice versa will be discussed especially with
regard to global environmental politics. The analytical framework to examine this relation is a
topology proposed by Mollinga (2008a, 2008b) in his political sociology of water resources
management.
2.2
The Political Sociology of Water Resources Management
"Water resources management is inherently political."
Mollinga (2008a: 10)
Considering the vast amount of social sciences literature on the specific issue of water
management, Mollinga (2008a, 2008b) put forward the development of what he calls a
political sociology of water resources management.
Starting from the premise that water resources management is inherently political, and that "in
a comprehensive analysis of water resources management the social relations of power that are
part of it need to be explicitly addressed" (2008a: 11), Mollinga proposes "a topology of
contested water resources management"5. While the sociological theories underlying his
approach shall not be discussed in detail, his topology is introduced as a framework for
analysis. According to that, the politics of Water Resources Management can be divided into
different "domains of interaction", namely:
1. The Global Politics of Water
According to Mollinga (2008b), "global politics is the arena in which at stake is the
distribution of governance forms and functions through predominating discourse and interests"
(p. 28). Both global politics and its underlying discourses are formed by epistemic
communities, i.e. "a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a
particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain"
(Haas 1992: 3). In the field of water politics the relevance of the global level is a rather new
occurrence starting in the 1990s, which will be depicted in section 6.1 of the analysis.
5
The term "management" is often used in rather confusing ways with regard to water. While sometimes
referring to a narrower concept in order to set it apart from "governance", it will be defined here in its
broader sense "as a generic term including water use, allocation, distribution, governance, regulation,
policy, etc." (Mollinga 2008a: 7).
7
2. Inter-State Hydropolitics
In this domain "conflicts and negotiation processes between sovereign states on water
allocation and distribution, particularly in relation to transboundary rivers" (Mollinga 2008b:
26) are taking place. The level of riparian struggles for freshwater has been covered quite
extensively in scientific literature and will be applied to the case of the Nile river in the
analysis of the case study.
3. The Politics of Water Policy in the Context of Sovereign States
This level deals with the "politics of policy" a term coined by Grindle (1977). It highlights the
political character of policies from drafting to implementation. This viewpoint criticizes any
linear concept of planned intervention. Rather policies are contested, reformulated and
modified according to the interest of actors involved in their design and implementation.
Hence, the politics of water policy take place at state level but also at the interface of the state
and the people affected by the respective policies (Mollinga 2008a: 12). For the case study this
level is relevant with regard to the internal struggles over water policies that take place
between different Ethiopian ministries. Also the contestation of these policies between streetlevel bureaucrats who are meant to implement them and the affected citizens will be discussed.
4. The Everyday Politics of Water
The term "everyday politics" in natural resource management is taken from Kerkvliet (1990).
Concerning water it "refers to the contested nature of day-to-day use of water resources"
(Mollinga 2008b: 23). This domain encompasses the politics of operational level actors'
resource use, access and control as they are mediated through local institutions. Accordingly,
this level does not only address farmers and their practices of resource use but the whole range
of actors involved in the operation of, in this case, an irrigation scheme. This includes the
project management, street-level bureaucrats, farmers' organizations as well as local religious
as and political institutions.
The fifth domain encompasses the interactions between the other domains, i.e. the
interlinkages between the different levels of political processes. After identifying these
interlinkages in the analysis, they will be brought linked to each other in the concluding
chapter to establish "how policy issues and water contestations travel across the different
domains, to analyze under what circumstances these are generated, and how they are translated
in the journey across the domains" (ibid: 26).
The value of this division lies in the fact that the different domains also "have different space
and time scales, are populated by different configurations of main actors, have different types
8
of issues as their subject matter, involve different modes of contestation and take place within
different sets of institutional arrangements" (2008a: 12).
How such institutional configurations matter in shaping actors' behaviour on the different
levels will be an integral part of the analysis. Therefore, the concept of institutions will be
briefly discussed in the following.
2.2.1 Institutions in Water Management
"Institutions are the rules of the game in a society"
North (1990: 3)
This rather plain statement about institutions by North (1990) covers a lot of the more
scientific notions about the phenomenon. The scientific translation of this statement is that
institutions, "more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction"
(ibid). The use of the term constraints shows a rather common assumption in classical
institutional theory, i.e. the fact that institutions mostly control and limit human behaviour in
the form of regulative elements such as norms, values and rules. This study is informed by a
different perspective on the phenomenon which also takes the enabling character of institutions
into account. If we understand human agency as "the socioculturally mediated capacity to act"
(Ahearn 2001: 112), then institutions mediate this capacity in both ways, they constrain it as
well as empower certain actors and activities (Scott 2001: 50).
This standpoint recognizes more recent developments in sociology such as Anthony Giddens'
structuration theory (1984) which describes social structures as performing a dual role since
"they are both the medium and the outcome of the practices they recursively organize" (p. 25).
In line with Giddens' approach, Scott (2001) defines institutions as "multifaceted, durable
social structures, made up of symbolic elements, social activities and material resources" (p.
49). This definition points out the importance of resources that are provided by institutions to
certain actors and activities. These resources empower actions taken by those with access to
them and constrain those without. Thus resources need to be included "in any conception of
social structure so as to take into account the asymmetries of power" (ibid).
This is obviously also applicable to natural resources such as water. This is why a major part
of the analysis deals with the institutionalization of irrigation in the case study area to highlight
the changes in power relations and constellations of actors that go along with this process. In
the global arena "the role of institutions in water management has increased in importance over
the last decade, in line with the claim by Ostrom [...] that ‘for the next several decades the
most important question in water resources management is that of institutional design rather
than engineering design'" (Ostrom 1993: 1907, cited in Pagan 2009: 20).
The reasons for the institutional management design of the studied irrigation scheme, the
differences between the planned outcomes and the actual implementation and the way these
institutions mediate actors' capacity to act will be examined throughout the study.
9
III
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY
Concerning the aforementioned division in political ecology (between those claiming it to
concentrate too much on the political and those who argue to focus even more on it) this study
follows Robbins' (2004: 207ff) notion that the problem is rather one of analytical focus than an
actual theoretical divide. In a study that tries to investigate the linkages between environmental
policies and their influence on different levels of political actors, as well as how the latter deal
with the resource, the focus is necessarily rather on the political than on the material or
environmental conditions. So the reason for not including ecological data into the study does
not stem from disagreeing with researchers like Vayda and their call for more ecology in
political ecology6.
For this study another methodological issue discussed in political ecology is more relevant,
namely that of scale (cf. Zimmerer & Bassett 2003). With the author coming from the field of
anthropology, the strong focus on fieldwork and the local farmers' perspective is an essential
part of this study. In this regard, Dove (1999) criticizes that anthropology often focuses solely
on the "indigenous" perspective when addressing the interaction of local communities with
their environment as influenced by state intervention - rather than studying the people inside
the governmental agencies involved in producing such intervention. According to Dove, this
will necessarily lead to an analytical bias and neglect important influencing factors.
In contrast to anthropology, discussions about analytical scale and its conceptual flaws in
human geography and related fields rather focus on the danger of overemphasizing the
influence of the global scale7 (Marston et al. 2005: 419). This neglects the complexity of socioterritorial relations and reduces local actors to the recipients of global actions. Picking up such
political ecology of scale, more recent approaches stress that the simple hierarchy of the
classical chain of explanation might be "a poor conceptual tool to manage such linkages and
relationships" (Robbins 2004: 212).
In this study, I will therefore try to draw on political ecology's original strength to employ an
"explicitly theoretical approach […] capable of accommodating general principles and detailed
local studies" (Paulson et al. 2003: 206) by focusing on the complexity of interlinkages, as
these are addressed in the fifth domain of Mollinga's topology.
The added value of merging political ecology and the political sociology of water resources
management is grounded in the fact that the latter focuses specifically on water as a resource
which provides the necessary focus. While both approaches concentrate on actor-based
multiscalar analyses, classical political economy tended to overemphasize the incorporation of
6
Also, within the interdisciplinary project of "Rethinking water storage for climate change adaptation in
Sub-saharan Africa", ecological data have been collected by a separate team of natural scientists.
7
Proposing that scale does not exist in and of itself, but is rather a social construct with wide-ranging
political implications, Marston et al (2005) provocatively call for a "Human geography without scale".
10
the local setting within larger political and economic constraints. This focus on "top-down"
causal relations ran the risk of undervaluing the agency and influence of local actors. Modern
political ecology has overcome this deterministic structural heritage from Neo-Marxist
thinking, allowing for a more dynamic understanding of dialectic processes between actors and
structure. Drawing on the principles of structuration theory, the model provided by Mollinga
takes this "iterative and cyclic" character of politics well into account.
However, narrowing down the multifaceted political and economic factors usually inherent in
a political ecology analysis is essential, because otherwise the inclusiveness of the approach
carries "the danger […] to produce a political ecology that is unmanageably complex and
theoretically incoherent" (Robbins 2004:10).
Although the label implies a rather different background and Mollinga himself rather
associates his approach with development sociology (Mollinga 2008a: 11), one could easily
call it a "political ecology of water resources management". Since the conception is actually
very similar, it can be integrated into the proposed political ecology framework without
difficulty and provides the necessary focus in applying the theory to the empirical data.
3.1
Methodology
3.1.1 Preparation and Field Situation
This study has been conducted as part of the research project "Re-thinking water storage for
climate change adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa". Funded by the German Federal Ministry of
Economic Cooperation and Development, this interdisciplinary project evaluates the need for
various water storage options in the Volta River basin in Ghana and the Blue Nile River basin
in Ethiopia, as these two countries are predicted to be affected differently by climate change.
Besides the technical and economic effectiveness, the project examines the social and
economic suitability in different physiographic and socio-political conditions, their
distributional outcomes and impact on local livelihoods, environmental consequences,
adoption potential and resilience. This shall be achieved by hydrological as well as socioeconomic studies conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and
ethnographic fieldwork conducted by members of the Center for Development Research (ZEF)
of which this study is a part.
Following a six months period of preparation together with the project members from ZEF,
fieldwork for the study was conducted during dry season between February and April 2010.
This included a preparatory meeting in Addis Abeba together with one of the project funding
agencies, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ). The journey to Bahir Dar was
accompanied by ZEF senior researcher Irit Eguavoen, who had been overseeing the design of
the research plan and introduced my colleague Weyni Tesfai and me to the local Bureau of
Water Development staff and the resident engineer at the research site. For the interviews we
11
each recruited an assistant for translation, transcription and general support from Bahir Dar
University. After finishing his Bachelor degree in sociology, my assistant Mengesha Shumet
was then preparing his Master thesis in educational psychology. Therefore he was familiar
with the principles and requirements of social sciences research which was very helpful when
jointly conducting interviews and working together in preliminary data analysis.
After visiting the project site for the first time, my colleague and I had been invited by the
manager and resident engineer Ato Zerihun to live on the project management compound
where the project's employees lived as well. He and the rest of the team were very supportive
and interested in the research results. This allowed for a close connection with the
management, operation and maintenance staff, the engineering team, the capacity building
wing of the Koga Irrigation Development Management and Operation (KIDMO) staff as well
as those responsible for watershed management, land redistribution and compensation affairs.
During the fieldwork period of six weeks in Merawi, the teamwork between Weyni Tesfai and
me had been very intense and fruitful. Living and working together allowed for a close
collaboration and continuous exchange of information. Thus, if not cited otherwise, all
information regarding the relocation process in the Koga scheme stems from comparing notes
and personal communication with her and her assistant.
3.1.2 Data Collection and Analysis
Data Collection
The qualitative methods applied during the research consisted mainly of structured and semistructured interviews, informal interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), participant
observations and various Rapid Rural Appraisal methods such as ranking exercises and
transect walks (see annex 1).
The majority of semi-structured interviews as well as FGDs have been conducted in those
areas where irrigation was already functional by the time of research. Therefore, most of the
interviewees among farmers were members of the Koga Irrigation Cooperative.
Nevertheless, I tried to include some farmers from the other locations to be able to compare
perceptions and problems of those who did not have first-hand experiences with the new
techniques to those who did. Another reason was the aim to observe if and how these
experiences were being transferred from one group to the other.
The interviews with farmers usually consisted of a structured part in form of a household
survey to learn about the social and economic situation including personal information about
the household members, cultivated crops, other means of income, distance to the nearest
freshwater source, access to electricity, sanitation, health and agricultural services, their
position in the kebele and the cooperative etc. The second part varied according to the answers
given and aimed at the perceptions of irrigation benefits and costs, technical problems and
social conflicts related to irrigation.
12
A large number of informal interviews was conducted with the staff from the Water Works
Design and Supervision Enterprise (WWDSE) responsible for the supervision and overall
management of the construction process as well as with those from the KIDMO team who
conduct trainings with farmers and who also took part in semi-structured interviews and FGDs.
Some of these trainings were attended to conduct participant observation summing up to a total
of six full days of lectures and discussions and one day of training on the fields. In addition,
five zonal meetings and one board meeting of the cooperative were attended and FGDs
conducted afterwards. Furthermore, interviews with staff and customers of the Agricultural
Service and Credit Service Cooperatives in Merawi added to the data.
Apart from that, more informal interviews were held with staff from the involved government
agencies namely the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) in Addis Abeba and Bahir Dar, the
Bureau for Agriculture and Rural Development (Board) in Addis Abeba and Bahir Dar and the
local Cooperative Promotion Bureau (CPB) in Merawi to learn about their framing of
problems related to national water development and the specific irrigation project. General
information was provided by GTZ in Addis Abeba and Bahir Dar.
One of the most time-consuming parts of the research was the obtaining and reviewing of the
extensive amount of available project documents - including the Feasibility Study and its
annexes (AIL 1995a, 1995b), the Appraisal Report from the African Development Bank
(AfDB 2010), monthly and quarterly reports issued by the engineering companies between
June 2003 and June 2010 as well as reports relating to Koga prepared by several consultant
firms on behalf of the MoWR -, strategy papers for global, international and national policies
regarding water management and legal texts concerning land tenure in Ethiopia.
Difficulties, Constraints, Biases
The greatest advantage for the research, being able to cooperate closely and live with the
project staff, also led to some of the greatest problems. Thanks to the cooperativeness of the
project management it was frequently possible to join workers who were going to the field in
their cars. On the one hand, this made fieldwork a lot easier considering the far distances to
some of the research sites, the low availability of public transport away from the main road and
the rather simple conditions of roads. On the other hand, this resulted in farmers perceiving the
researchers as part of the project and not as neutral observers. The white pickup trucks are an
unmistakable sign of arriving project staff in the rural areas where the sight of any other cars is
highly exceptional in any case.
It was rather difficult to clarify one's role as an independent researcher to avoid wrong
expectations among interviewees such as sanctions - whether positive or negative - according
to their answers. The longer the research lasted the more this phenomenon affected the
interviews since the parliamentary elections were about to be held in May 2010 and peasants
increasingly suspected the researchers to be on a political mission. In some cases this affected
13
the quality of data obtained, e.g. when interviewees were busy repeating that they were "very
very satisfied with the government's job"8 - although that was not at all the topic of the
interview - or promised they would vote for the ruling party again, no matter what, but it
would be great if in return they could get some cheap inputs. This complicated the discussion
of sensitive political issues even more, as will be discussed in section 7.4.
The long distances between the different communities involved in such a large project were
another problem. Due to time-constraints none of the upstream communities could be visited
so that all information related to these localities come from second hand sources.
Another possible bias resulted from the objective to examine how the farmers' organization in
Koga works and how its institutionalization would affect power structures among its members
and related non-members. Since it was crucial to understand the organizational capacities and
institutional structures of the cooperative a major part of the interviews was conducted with
group leaders, zonal committee members as well as Board members. Despite efforts to balance
the selection of interviewees, this still resulted in a gender and power bias within the sample.
Moreover, the research was conducted at a time when the project had not been finalized yet.
Re-studies would be needed to grasp the full development of the adaptation process. Moreover,
six weeks do obviously not suffice to provide a long-term perspective but rather a snapshot of
the situation.
Data Analysis
The transcription of recordings from interviews, FGDs and observations of trainings in
Amharic had already been completed by my assistant during fieldwork so that I myself only
had to transcribe the English interviews (with ministerial staff etc.) after returning from
Ethiopia. Thereafter, I coded the transcripts with Computer Assisted/Aided Qualitative Data
Analysis (CAQDAS) software. I commenced with open coding and when I had some
understanding of the key problems I re-read everything for axial coding (cf. Babbie 2010:
401f) to develop and refine categories. Since I employed a variety of methods, in some cases it
was possible to extract numeric data and generate quantitative statements. These however do
only complement the qualitative textual data. Since my sample was rather small (n<60) the
numbers do not represent statistical information.
I repeated the coding process for the policy texts and project documents that I examined to find
intertextual relations as well as connections to my field data9. This sort of data analysis stems
8
Interview, Chihona, March 31, 2010
9
Thus, a critical text analysis has been applied throughout the study to examine the discursive practice
of policy making and implementation, but since the focus of the study is the empirical data obtained in
the field, the evaluation of secondary data (i.e. written texts in the form of project documents, legal and
policy papers) could only be included selectively. Sophisticated and complex procedures of linguistic
text analysis such as Critical Discourse Analysis (cf. Fairclough 1989, 1992, 1995) could not be
applied due to time constraints.
14
from grounded theory (cf. Glaser & Strauss 1967), an inductive strategy to generate theories
from empirical data. In fact, I had no explicit theoretical framework to guide the data
collection or when I wrote the research report for the ZEF project. Although I had not intended
to use grounded theory as a research method, it turned out to be a fruitful approach to
conceptualize the phenomena observed in the field. After collecting and analysing the data, I
finally decided to use political ecology as a theoretical framework. With this "reverse" way of
research there was no danger to "beg the question". Political ecology suggested itself when
looking at the data rather than presupposing inherent political factors. When I had decided to
use the research results for my thesis as well and to use political ecology as the analytical
approach I reformulated the research objectives accordingly and went through all the data
again. In doing so, I looked more closely into the global aspects of water politics that I found
to have influenced the local processes that I had observed. In the following I will outline these
research questions and describe which data I used to answer them.
3.2
Research Questions
The questions that have been guiding this study result from the combined framework of
political ecology and the political sociology of water resources management as they were
described above, i.e. acknowledging the importance of discursive construction of knowledge,
taking into account the agency of actors (in contrast to finding underlying structures) and the
interconnectedness amongst a complex set of political and economic scales:
 What institutions, policies and discourses are produced in global environmental politics in
general, and in water politics in particular, and how do they relate to one another?
This question will be addressed mainly in section 6.1, "The Global Politics of Water". The data
was obtained from a review of the literature available on the topic of water politics. Moreover
a connection will be made between the climate change debate and the resulting policies on the
one hand and the domain of water politics on the other hand to point out the intertextual
relatedness of the discourses and how their relation influences the framing of environmental
issues on the global political level.
 Which actors are involved in the management of irrigation water on the different
political scales and what are their interests?
The actors and their interests will be identified separately for each political domain. For global
politics and interstate hydropolitics the data stems from secondary literature, actors on the
state-level have been determined through an analysis of legislative texts and national policy
15
papers as well as through their presence in the field. The actors on the local level have been
identified through the ethnographic fieldwork.
 How do the interests and allocation of power differ between stakeholders and what
conflicts arise from such discrepancies
- within the same group of actors?
- between different groups of actors?
Answers to this question will be given in chapters seven and eight. Chapter seven, "Disparities
Within", focuses on the difference of interests and power between groups on the local level,
while Chapter eight, "Conflicts Between", points out differing interests between actors of
different political domains, e.g. between farmers and state agencies. This information is
obtained through a combination of project documents and the empirical data.
 What are the interlinkages between different political domains, i.e. how do politics
on different scales impact on each other and how are these impacts dealt with in
the process of local adaptation to irrigation farming?
With the analysis of all political levels given, the concluding sections to chapter seven and
eight focus on the linkages that can be drawn from the results. The strategies farmers use to
come to terms with the intervention to their environment are examined with regard to the
impact that other political levels have on their means of adaptation.
The final chapter summarizes the findings of the study, providing a synthesis of the results.
IV
PEASANTS AND STATE INTERVENTION IN ETHIOPIA
As Ethiopia's core economy, agriculture accounts for nearly half of the GDP and almost 85
percent of the country's population depend on agriculture for their livelihood (CSA 2005).
Still, agricultural production cannot keep up with the country's fast growing population: with
about 80.7 million inhabitants Ethiopia is already the second most populous country in Africa
while its population is increasing at an annual growth rate of 2.6 (World Bank 2010). Land
degradation in the highlands is an increasing problem and despite its actually abundant
freshwater resources, Ethiopia is infamous for its drought-induced famines. Ranking among
the poorest countries in the world, about 44 % of the population live under the poverty line
which is a rather high value for African standards. Most of the more than 12 million people in
Ethiopia, who are chronically or at least periodically food insecure, live in rural areas,
suggesting that smallholders are often unable to sustain their own livelihood by agricultural
means (ibid). According to the World Bank the productivity of agriculture in Ethiopia is with
around 1.2 tons per hectare among the lowest in the world (World Bank 1999: viii).
Now, such gloomy descriptions of the country's agricultural conditions and the accompanying
misery of its people are by no means new. They have become something of a hallmark for
Ethiopia, at the latest after the broad media coverage of the 1984/1985 famine. As Peter Gill
16
puts it: "Instead of its glorious past and rich culture, we now associate Ethiopia with famine. It
has become the iconic poor country" (Gill 2010: 3).
The widespread notion that top-down interference with a technocentric approach helps to stir
development has been discussed above. The Ethiopian state has likewise tried to overcome
food insecurity by extending its control over peasants to improve their farming techniques.
This chapter provides a short overview of state intervention in Ethiopia to put the case study
into a broader historical context. Three political phases within Ethiopia's more recent history
can be identified: the imperial regime of Emperor Haile Selassie which was overthrown in
1974, the socialist regime of the Derg, and the post-Derg era since 1991.
An important issue regarding the interference with rural structures is people's access to land.
However, due to the country's cultural and ecological diversity the Ethiopian land tenure
systems are numerous and complex. Especially during the feudalist time a number of different
systems were in place at a time so that a comprehensive discussion of these cannot be provided
here10.
Besides church, village and private tenures the most common and important one for the region
under study was the kinship system of rist. The rist system was an inherited use right of land
based on ambilineal descent. So when the individual holder of the rist right dies, the land was
distributed equally amongst the children, both male and female. The system was therefore both
one of common land rights, since it was based on the kin group or lineage, and at the same
time one of private rights to the individual as a more or less autonomous cultivator. However,
rist was also characterized by feudal lord-vassal relationships, with the communities having to
pay tribute to the state represented by aristocratic elites.
After Haile Selassie's imperial regime had been overthrown by the Derg, the new socialist
government completely changed the agrarian structures and people's access to land. The
"Public Ownership of Rural Land Proclamation" brought all agrarian land under state
ownership and started to organize peasants in farm collectives to put an end to the allegedly
inefficient and exploitative feudal rist system of the imperial regime. The intervention did not,
however, have the envisaged beneficial effects:
"Ironically, the net effect of the Derg's actions was to lessen farmers' incentives for
good natural resource management by decreasing both the security of land tenure and
the profitability of agriculture. At the same time it appears to have reduced, instead of
increased, food security in many areas" (Hoben 1995).
Mismanagement and the factual abolishment of tenancy made these cooperatives most
unpopular with the rural population and to this day many farmers despise the idea of becoming
members of cooperatives. McCann (1995), who has provided a comprehensive work on the
10
For details on Ethiopian land tenure systems see Cohen & Weintraub 1975, Crewett et al. 2008,
Gilkes 1975, McCann 1995, Pausewang et al. 1990.
17
history of Ethiopian peasantry, argues that peasant associations came to be an instrument of
control rather than a communication channel through which farmers could express their needs.
This again was part of the development discourse described above and eventually contributed
to the decline in production that Ethiopian farmers experienced in the 1970s and 1980s:
"intervention also reflected a dominant ethos among the urban bureaucracy that change in the
agricultural sector could come about only by managing production and controlling rural
dwellers" (p. 250). To what extent these cooperatives still serve as a tool for political control
and intervention today will be discussed in the case study below.
Although the producer cooperatives quickly fell apart after the Derg had been overthrown in
1991 the expected changes in access to land did not come. Article 40 of the new Ethiopian
constitution from 1995 and the subsequent "Federal Rural Land Administration Proclamation"
from 1997, which transfers the authority for land administration to the regional governments,
both confirm ownership of the state:
"The right to ownership of rural land and urban land, as well as of all natural resources
is exclusively vested in the state and the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common
property of the nations, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia" (GoE 1995: Article 40).
With land degradation becoming an increasingly serious problem, in 2000 the government
strived for improved tenure security to create incentives for farmers to properly manage and
invest into their land. In the course of these reforms the Environmental Protection Land
Administration and Use Authority (EPLAUA) was established to coordinate land registration
in Amhara National Regional State (Adenew & Abdi 2005: 12). Despite these improvements
and considerable differences between regions, it is universal that ownership remains with the
state and farmers are only given usufruct rights.
4.1
Irrigation and State Intervention
Historically, irrigation has always been closely related to the formation of states and the rule
over their citizens. The term "hydraulic societies", which through the centralized control of
irrigation systems established strong bureaucracies, was famously coined by Wittfogel (1957)
in his work Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. The notion is that a lot
of societies, especially in Asia, focused strongly on the building of large-scale irrigation
infrastructure which could only be accomplished by the organization of forced labour.
Therefore the state needed large and complex bureaucratic structures and a weak civil society
to guarantee obedience both for construction and maintenance of the irrigation works. As the
title suggests, such a state would necessarily be despotic and aim at exerting total power.
Although many of Wittfogel's assumptions have been heavily contested (e.g. Hunt 1988) and
empirical evidence shows that even large irrigations systems do not inevitably demand for
centralized authoritative management (Ostrom 1992), "regardless of the direction in which
causality runs, harnessing water on a large scale has been associated with the formation of
18
many of early powerful states" (Barker & Molle: 8). However, early irrigation politics were
usually decentralized in a way that governments were not directly involved in day-to-day
management and operation of the schemes. It was only in the 19th century with "the emergence
of irrigation bureaucracies as government departments" (Mollinga & Bolding 2004: 1) that the
state became an active player in everyday irrigation practices.
Despite the long history of water management in human civilisation, the widespread
construction of large dams did not start until the middle of the 20th century. But with increasing
technological progress and the political belief in their benefits for development, the second
part of the 20th century saw a rapid expansion of irrigated areas in countries of the South,
especially when former colonies became independent. This process was heavily subsidized by
Western donors and international loans for development, in particular with respect to large
scale canal irrigation systems (ibid). Over the years however, large dams were increasingly
being criticized for their adverse social and environmental impacts 11.
Fig. 1: Dams in Ethiopia
Source: Kloos & Legesse (2010: 80)
Starting around 2000 years
ago, irrigation has a long
history in Ethiopia but was rather practiced on a small scale. In many regions, irrigation was
introduced not until the 20th century and schemes were usually controlled by landlords in the
feudal system (Kloos & Legesse 2010: 105). With the coming to power of the Derg, irrigation
and in fact agriculture as a whole, declined due to the socialist land reforms of 1975. Today,
11
This issue will be taken up in section 6.1 on global water politics.
19
only around 5% of Ethiopia's water resources are being utilized, so state intervention for
irrigation on a large scale is rather at a beginning stage, with dam construction on the rise.
Considering the social and environmental problems that large scale projects in the water sector
have caused in the past, "the new rush into large‐scale irrigation is inviting a number of
problems" (Moges et al. 2010: 83) that have already been recognized in the dam debate of the
1990s and the literature on irrigation failure in Africa as a whole (ibid: 84). How these
problems manifest themselves in the Koga project will be discussed throughout the following
chapters.
20
V
THE KOGA PROJECT: AN INTRODUCTION
5.1
Location and Segmentation
The project is located in Gojam Zone, in the highlands of Amhara Region (see Fig. 2), at an
altitude of 1,900 to 3,200 masl and is subject to the intertropical convergence zone. This leads
to a single rainy season roughly occurring between June/July and September/October,
producing a single rain-fed
Fig. 2: Location of the research site
cropping season, referred to as
Meher in Ethiopia. Situated
near the capital of Mecha
Woreda, Merawi, the project
lies about 35 kilometres south
of the regional capital Bahir
Dar.
The small town of Merawi lies
at the roadside of the main
road, linking Addis Abeba to
Gondar and Aksum, and can
thus be reached easily by car or
public transport. It has a local
market, basic health facilities,
Provided by ZEF
educational and administrative
services and agricultural extension services. Electricity and water supply are generally
available in town but not extended to all quarters especially those on the periphery. The
existing and future command areas of Koga lie some kilometres west of Merawi town,
stretching both to the north and south of the main road into the countryside, and are therefore
far less accessible. The Project Management Unit and all offices are located in between
Merawi and the command areas south of the road. The dam and the reservoir are located even
further to the south (see Fig. 3).
The Koga irrigation scheme is designed to improve watershed management in the catchment
area of about 22,000 ha of and supply irrigation to the more than 7,000 ha of command area
which is divided into twelve irrigation units corresponding to the secondary canals. Out of
these twelve locations research has been conducted mainly within three of the hydrological
units, i.e. Kudmi, Chihona and Inguti, since these were the blocks where irrigation was
already, or was in the process of becoming, functional, during the time of research. The
irrigation structures of the remaining nine units were still under construction.
21
5.2
Population and Settlement
Settlement in the rural gots is quite dispersed. Single households resulting from the cognatic
settlement structure or homesteads of extended families are unevenly distributed close to the
fields and are usually located
Fig. 3: Project area
next to the family's garden for
horticulture. Housing mainly
consists of thatched huts that
are made of timber and mud
although some of the wealthier
families have started to use
corrugated
iron
sheets
for
roofing instead.
According to project reports,
the vast majority of the local
farmer population is culturally
rather "homogenous", about
96% being ethnic Amharic and
Ethiopian Orthodox (cf. Cost
Recovery Study). The total
population of the command area, excluding the local capital Merawi town, was estimated to be
N
around 33,000 in 1995 with an annual growth rate of nearly 3%. This growth rate is confirmed
by numbers of 2003, which estimated a total population of 40,000 (cf. MMD 2003).
Table 1: Population data for the command area
22
male
Kudmi
Ambo Mesk
kebele
female
total
8
6
4245
4019
8264
11
6
3423
3365
6842
total no. of gots
no. of gots in
command area
total population
Inguti
8
8
2904
2176
5080
Amarit
14
6
9437
1514
10950
Andinet
8
4
7646
6933
14582
16
8
3298
3217
6515
8
1
2519
2403
4922
73
39
33475
23627
57155
Tagel Wedefit
Inamirt
Total
Source: DHWSES (2008)
However, data from 2007 indicates a population of 57,155 for the overall area (see table 1).
This would imply a much higher growth rate (around 10%) than before. However, this is
probably due to the fact that the population of gots that are not located within the command
were not counted in earlier calculations.
The numbers from 2007 state that the average household size in the area was about 5.2 people
(DHWSES 2008: 49), which is in line with the findings from interviews suggesting a
household size of 5.4 on average.
Amhara National Regional State covers an area of about 153,000 km and according to the
Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA) the total population range around 19,120,000, of
which 16,925,000 i.e. 88.5 percent, live in rural areas (CSA 2005).
23
5.3
Land Scarcity and Fragmentation
The notorious scarcity of land in the Ethiopian highlands is usually ascribed to the country's
great population growth accompanied by a "classical" neo-Malthusian discourse regarding
land degradation and soil erosion. While this is part of the phenomenon, historically the
fragmentation is also rooted in the ambilineal descent system which assigns equal property
rights to all of the families' children and the consequential land allocation: "with ambilineal
claims on land the system has produced logarithmic increases in claims over time and a
scramble of viable plots within each community" resulting in a "patchwork quilt of oddly
shaped plots" (McCann 1995: 72).
This decrease in size of individual plots over time is also evident in the Koga area:
Average land holding size in 2007 was estimated to be 2.1 ha for those who did not use
irrigation yet and 1.68 ha for those who did. This is because beneficiaries had to give away
about 20% of their land for allocation to relocatees (cf. DHWSES 2008). However, the
majority of households (about 51%) only had between 0.25 and 1 ha of land which implies that
some few farmers have considerably larger slots of land than the vast majority. In general one
can observe a considerable reduction in average land holding size since the early 1990s, when
the feasibility study was conducted and land size was estimated to be 3.3 ha on average (AIL
1995b: 8). The tenure system described above, which prohibits sale or mortgage, limits the
variety of land transactions. For that reason the most common forms of land and labour
exchange in the research area are still sharecropping (locally referred to as timad or timado, a
term derived from the pair of oxen supplied by one of the sharers) and hiring daily labourers
(kenja). Landless households have therefore very limited opportunities to gain access.
Interviewees stated that due to that shortage of land an increasing number of young men are
working as daily labourers on other farmers' fields or are forced to migrate to find work in
other parts of ANRS, since the region does not offer enough opportunities to engage in wage
labour for the landless youth. Especially widows and other women in female-headed
households reported this to be a problem as they lacked their sons' support in farming.
5.4
Planning and Construction: A Short History of Delays
The research area has already been considered for the implementation of potential irrigation
schemes in the 1980s under the military regime. Following the shift of power to the
Transitional Government of Ethiopia in 1991 and the elections in 1994, the Feasibility Study
was finalized the following year. The project was finally launched one year after the African
Development Bank (AfDB) agreed to finance the project in 2001. Initially, the completion of
the project was planned for 2008 but plans changed due to demands made by the financier,
which the Ministry of Water Resources communicated to the implementing companies in
November 2003:
24
"Following a ministerial visit last month we were requested to prepare a plan of action
for a more rapid implementation of the project, to achieve substantial completion of all
works by the end of 2006, some two years earlier than originally planned" (MMD
2003).
The specialized public enterprise Water Works Design and Supervision Enterprise (WWDSE)
had been put in charge to supervise and monitor the construction works. Two Chinese
contracting companies, i.e. China Jiangxi Corporation for International Economic and
Technical Cooperation and China International Economic and Electric Corporation, were
assigned to the construction of the dam and the irrigation and drainage system, which should
have been finished in 2006 and 2007, respectively.
The main earth dam is 21.5 metres high and 1860 metres long, while the saddle dam, located
around 6 kilometres to the northeast of the main dam is 18.50 metres high and 1,106 metres
long. It therefore qualifies as a large dam, in accordance with the definition by the
International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD, cited in Scudder 2005).
However, since both firms were not up to the task, the construction got delayed repeatedly and
by the time of writing the finalization of the canal system had again been deferred until the end
of 2011, which means an overall delay of four years.This delay was one reason for the severe
financing problems of the project. According to recent project documents issues relating to
payment and shortage of budget have not been resolved with AFDB. The total final cost
estimate for the dam construction "is ETB 113,569,143.92 as compared to 76,668,264.33 of
the contract price (both including VAT) which has increased the final project costs to 48.1%"
(WWDSE 2010). An even greater cost increase had occurred for the irrigation and drainage
infrastructure, for which the price has almost doubled due to the delay (ibid).
The status quo of the construction progress at the time of research is shown in table 2, which
Table 2: Overview of construction process
Command Area
Kudmi Command
Chihona Command
Inguti Command
Tagel Wedefit
Tekle
Dib Command
Command
Ambo Mesk Command
Adbera Mariam
Telata
Command
Command
Lasi Command
Bered Command
Amarit Command
Andinet Command
Total
Irrigated
Area (ha)
(Planned) date of finalization
373
617
393
616
864
812
803
787
484
468
290
497
completed before dry season 2009/2010
completed before dry season 2009/2010
completed February 2010 (mid dry season)
completed before dry season 2010/2011
completed before dry season 2010/2011
completed before dry season 2010/2011
completed before dry season 2010/2011
planned to be completed before May 2011
planned to be completed before May 2011
planned to be completed before May 2011
planned to be completed before May 2011
planned to be completed before May 2011
7 004
Source: WWDSE (2010)
25
also shows that the initial 6,000 ha of command area have been adjusted upwards, so that the
final command is now set to be 7,004 ha. This number is based on another correction, which
had been made for the dam's maximum storage volume.
Fig. 4: Cross drainage under construction
Source: Vigerske (2008:8)
While the Appraisal Report - in line with the calculations made in the Feasibility Study - had
designated a volume of 77.18 million m3 for the water reservoir created on the Koga River,
capable of delivering 9,400 m3 per ha per annum, this number had been changed to 80.33
million m3 by the British consultant company Mott McDonald (MMD) in 2004. The reservoir
simulations which led to the increased command area have been criticized by other
engineering firms for being unreliable and leaving "uncertainty about the available volume of
water and consequently the future command area to be irrigated" (DHWSES 2008: 44).
According to the project engineers, the actual volume in the dam reservoir had reached almost
50 million m3 of water - sufficient to irrigate 4,600 ha of land - during the rainy season 2010
(WWDSE 2010, personal communication).
The construction delay and the problems leading to it, as well as those resulting from it, have
been frequently discussed in the project's monthly reports by the supervising consultant and
engineering companies MMD and WWDSE throughout the entire construction process.
Due to these documents and in
Fig. 5: Depiction of the canal system
line with statements by project
staff and farmers alike the
Chinese companies not only
faced
organizational
and
technical problems like lack of
gasoline for vehicles. Also
problematic was the ongoing
resistance among the local
population who opposed the
construction works. Resistance
among the farmers had several
reasons. The most obvious one
26
Source: Vigerske (2008), modified and combined with photos by the
author
was a reluctance to abandon or surrender valuable land for the building of infrastructures,
whereas the most important reason due to the peasant's statements had a religious background.
With the construction already delayed, the Chinese companies were on a tight schedule and
made their staff work every day - including Sundays and other religious holidays, which
offended the orthodox population in general and the priests in particular.
The conflict resulted in a deterioration of the Chinese workers' already difficult situation
within the local community: according to both observations and interviewees' responses the
Chinese who live in their own camp away from local people's settlements are - mildly put - not
well liked among the local peasants and not even among their Ethiopian co-workers. However,
the delay had the most severe effects on those households who had to relocate for the
construction of the dam due to the inundation of some 2,000 ha of land. Since the calculations
for compensation payments had been made on the basis of a punctual time schedule, many
households ran out of money before receiving arable land (for a detailed study on the
relocation process see section 7.2 of this study and cf. Eguavoen & Tesfai 2011).
27
VI
THE POLITICS OF WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN KOGA
6.1
The Global Politics of Water: The New Oil, Dams and IWRM
"Many of the wars of the 20th century were about oil, but wars of the 21st century will
be over water."
Ismail Serageldin (then World Bank Vice President), 1996
There is astounding consensus amongst the most diverse sections of society that "water is the
new oil". It is framed as such from World Bank to the media (e.g. Berfield 2008, Brodie 2008,
Cooper 2008, Interlandi 2010, and Wachmann 2007), from the Chairman of the Coca Cola
company (cf. Stedman 2009) to political activists (cf. Barlow & Clarke 2002) and the scientific
community (cf. Whitely, Ingram & Perry 2008: 1). The rhetoric is that we are in the middle of
a water crisis and it will be aggravated by climate change. If oil was the black gold of the last
century, water is the blue gold of this century - both in terms of scarcity and resulting conflict
and even more so in its essential value to all forms of life. While being on top of the
international political agenda today, water was not one of the major issues in environmental
debates of the 1980s and early 90s. Larson (2011) argues that "water has taken on a new
significance in light of three aspects of globalization: economic globalization, the rise of supranational governmental institutions, and global civil society" (p.2) and that each has produced
its own discourse regarding water. An important feature of discourses is that they "are not only
embedded in a particular culture, ideology or history, but are also connected intertextually to
other discourses" (Titscher et al. 2000: 146). Therefore, the global discourse on climate change
will also be examined in this section in order to show that it reinforces certain elements of
water politics by legitimizing the increasing construction of infrastructure for water storage
and, at the same time, overshadows certain aspects by being framed as the most important
issue in global environmental change.
Water was hardly being mentioned in the Brundtland Commission's programme "Our
Common Future" (WCED 1987) and did not occur as one of the central topics during the 1992
UN Conference for Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio and its Agenda 21. But as
one of the preparatory meetings for Rio, the International Conference on Water and the
Environment in Dublin had a greater impact on the salience of water in international policies.
It produced a set of guidelines known as the Dublin principles, which underpin the paradigm
of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM):
"(1) Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and
the environment
(2) Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach,
involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels
(3) Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water
28
(4) Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an
economic good" (UN Documents 2011).
The introduction of "water as an economic good" was supposed to replace the concept of water
as a public good only, managed by bureaucracies with little liability to the users of their
services. New ideas emerged, such as water markets for the transfer of water and cost recovery
as a mechanism for demand management. For the latter, the rationale was that if users would
have to pay for water they would cut back their water use, resulting in a more efficient and
sustainable use of the resource. This concept has been encouraged particularly in irrigation, the
largest water consuming sector of all, where volumetric charging was to be installed (Lamoree
& van Steenbergen 2006).
AfDB also incorporated this in the Koga project design: "The most important positive impact
of the project will be to sustain and build the capacities of farmers in practicing the demanddriven approach" (AfDB 2001: iii). However, principle number four and the subsequent
concepts to treat water as an economic good have proven to be very controversial and will be
discussed for the case study in section 8.2.
The same conference in Dublin was important for the emergence of global institutions in water
by laying the foundation stone for several global players in the water domain. First was the
foundation of the World Water Council (WWC) in 1996. The self-labelled ‘international multistakeholder platform' was launched by the World Bank, UNDP and other international water
elites from the fields of development and the private sector. Also in 1996, the World Bank, the
UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Swedish International Development Agency
(SIDA) established the Global Water Partnership (GWP), an international network of
organizations that foster IWRM principles in their work on water resources management. In
the course of these events "IWRM has become the discursive framework of international water
policy" (Conca 2006: 126, highlight in the original). The WWC's World Water Forum, taking
place every three years since 1997, has grown to become the largest international event in the
field of water. For the 2nd Forum in Den Haag, the two groups joined to form the World
Commission on Water (WCW) for the 21st Century which published the "World Water
Vision". This emphasized the holistic, integrated approach of IWRM, embracing all the
different uses of water and an integration of water-related sectors, scales and stakeholders in
the decision-making processes.
While water was somewhat of a late bloomer it quickly became one of the top themes in global
environmental governance debates of the late 1990s when another water-related topic was
being increasingly discussed on a global level, namely that of large dams. What initiated the
discussion was the mounting evidence of the adverse social, cultural and environmental effects
of large dams alongside a growing resistance amongst civil society groups. The World Bank
faced increasing opposition from local and transnational NGOs to the projects it was financing.
The idea emerged to create a World Commission on Dams (WCD); an institution with the
29
purpose to evaluate the effectiveness of large dams and to develop standards, criteria and
guidelines for future decision making (Brinkerhoff 2002). Established in 1998, the WCD was
considered "a unique experiment in global public policymaking" (Dubash et al. 2001: 1- 2) for
its inclusiveness and transparency.
In November 2000, the Commission's final report, Dams and Development (WCD 2000), was
published, harshly criticizing past dam projects. It states that besides the benefits of dams "in
too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those
benefits, especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities
downstream, by taxpayers and by the natural environment. Lack of equity in the distribution of
benefits has called into question the value of many dams in meeting water and energy
development needs when compared with the alternatives" (p. 310). Inequitable power relations
and closed decision-making processes were identified to be a major reason for the adverse
effects of dams on people. The participatory approach which is at the core of IWRM could
help to find a remedy, but neither the principles of IWRM nor the actors involved in its
promotion and implementation remain undisputed. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, water
activists and laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, criticize WWC, GWP and WCW to be
part of a water lobby that follows neo-liberal policies "through close links with global water
corporations and financial institutions" (Barlow and Clarke 2002: 157).
In his analysis of water governance, Conca (2006) concludes that this network of water elites
and experts has played a powerful role in designing and promoting IWRM as the new
paradigm for global governance of water. Nevertheless, "with its often technocratic
understanding of knowledge and rationality, its emphasis on the state as the source of change,
and the mounting vested interests of water experts in a global water sector" (ibid: 158), it
failed to adapt that framework "to the most contentious social conflicts and controversies
related to water" (ibid: 161), including that of participation. The question of how the rhetoric
of participation in the dam debate and the IWRM paradigm is put into practice in the case of
the Koga project will therefore be a central part of this study.
6.1.1 The Global Politics of Climate Change and Water
"Water and its availability and quality will be the main pressures on, and issues for,
societies and the environment under climate change."
Bates et al. 2008: 7
Water and climate change are closely related issues and are treated as such in most global fora
concerned with one of the two issues. Therefore, climate change discourse and policies have
an influence on global water policies as well. A brief overview of actors and institutions
involved in climate change policies shall be provided here to outline the linkages between the
two.
30
In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), both UN organizations, established the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) to review and assess the most recent information on climate change.
This was confirmed in December 1988 by the United Nations General Assembly through
Resolution 43/53. With the aim to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current
state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic
impacts, the IPCC regularly publishes assessment reports, of which the first was published in
1990. Its results12 led to the formulation of an environmental treaty to combat global warming
that was signed at the aforementioned Earth Summit in Rio 1992. It aimed at stabilizing
greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous
outcomes of anthropogenic interference with the climate system13 (UN 1992). Originally, the
treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
did not set compulsory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for nation states and did not include
enforcement provisions; i.e. it was a legally non-binding agreement. However, the treaty
included provisions for updates, the so-called "protocols", that actually did envisage obligatory
emission limits. Since UNFCCC is in force, the signatories meet annually at the conferences of
the parties (COP) to assess and discuss the progress made. The first ever legally binding
agreement on emissions was the Kyoto Protocol, as the principal update of UNFCCC adopted
at COP 3 in 1997 and in force since 2005, which has become better known than the framework
convention itself.
At COP 7 in Marrakesh 2001, the UNFCCC agreed on special measures to help Least
Developed Countries (LDC) to adapt to climate change in form of National Adaptation
Programmes of Action (NAPAs). The COP report states that "the rationale for developing
NAPAs rests on the low adaptive capacity of LDCs, which renders them in need of immediate
and urgent support to start adapting to current and projected adverse effects of climate change"
(UNFCCC 2001). The Ethiopian NAPA emphasizes the need for water storage as a means for
climate change adaptation which will be discussed in section 6.3 on national water politics.
Earlier the same year, IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) had been published. On the
issues of climate change and water, it states that: "climate change challenges existing water
resources management practices by adding additional uncertainty. Integrated water resources
management will enhance the potential for adaptation to change" (IPCC 2001: 193). Such
12
It states "with certainty" that human activities are significantly increasing the atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases, resulting in additional warming of the Earth's surface. They
calculate "with confidence" that carbon dioxide has been responsible for more than half of that
greenhouse effect. And it is predicted that under a "business as usual" scenario, global mean
temperature will increase by about 0.3 °C per decade during the 21st century, which is "a more rapid
increase than seen over the past 10,000 years" (IPCC 1990: 50).
13
The "tipping point" for such outcomes is commonly believed to be around 2°C above the preindustrial global average temperature (IPCC 1990)
31
explicit support of IWRM in IPCC documents shows the intertextual relations between water
and climate change debates. It also implicitly opts for the development of water infrastructure:
"Unmanaged systems are likely to be most vulnerable to climate change" (ibid). Thus, the
climate change debate reinforces the IWRM paradigm to some degree and underlines the
importance of water storage for climate change adaptation. By emphasizing these aspects,
other perspectives are being neglected. For example, the rationality to increase water storage
for climate change adaptation stands against other concerns such as environmental flow
requirements. A study by the WWF identifies the Nile as one of the world's ten most
endangered rivers (Wong et al. 2007). This sensitivity largely results from evaporation which
is going to increase in case of higher temperatures due to climate change (ibid: 29). The
creation of larger water surfaces in reservoirs for dams aggravates the problem of evaporation
and increases the human withdrawal of water from the Nile. In a river which does not reach the
sea in dry years, framing water storage as the solution for water scarcity is essentially a matter
of political and economic interests.
Thus, climate change overshadows certain aspects of water management in being framed as
the challenge of anthropogenic environmental change that humanity has to face in the future.
And this is although "the global impact of direct human intervention in the terrestrial water
cycle (through land cover change, urbanization, industrialization, and water resources
development) is likely to surpass that of recent or anticipated climate change, at least over
decadal time scales" (Meybeck and Vörösmarty 2004, cited in Vörösmarty et al. 2004: 510).
6.2
Interstate Hydropolitics: The Struggle for the Nile
The seemingly paradox situation of about 110 billion m3 of water flowing across the country's
borders every year while a majority of the population lives in a state of constant undersupply
with water is created by a high variability in rainfall and lack of infrastructure. Since
smallholders account for nearly 90% of the overall agricultural production in Ethiopia and at
the same time present the group most vulnerable to the uncertain climatic conditions, the
national food security is accordingly low.
Thus, Ethiopia has a high stake in water resources development as an acknowledged strategy
for economic development and poverty alleviation. Water storage and irrigation schemes are
therefore embedded both into the Ethiopian national poverty reduction strategy - amongst the
most recent are the Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program from 2002 and
the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty from 2006 - and the
Ethiopian National Adaptation Programme of Action (MoWR & NMA 2007).
However, while the potential for water storage is high, the potential for disputes is as well:
Since approx. 90% of the country's freshwater cross international borders, transboundary
management of the resource is indispensable - with the Blue Nile (called Abbay river in
Ethiopia) being the most controversial (cf. Kloos & Legesse 2010). As one of the country's
32
largest river basins, the Abbay has been identified as a central investment area. According to
the MoWR, the total area of the basin is 199,812 km2 with about 46% of the total basin area
situated within Amhara Region, where the research was conducted. The ministry furthermore
points out that the "Abbay Basin is the most important Basin in Ethiopia by most criteria as it
contributes about 45% of the countries surface water resources, 25% of the population, 20% of
the landmass, 40% of the nation's agricultural product and most of the hydropower and
irrigation potential of the country" (MoWR 2010). While the basin has an estimated irrigation
potential of about 711,000 ha (Arsano & Tamrat 2005) it is also the largest tributary to the Nile
and is therefore subject to political and economic interests of the other riparian nations,
especially those of Egypt and Sudan.
Thomas Homer-Dixon has argued that in transboundary water management "conflict is most
probable when a downstream riparian - a river-bordering state - is highly dependent on river
water and is strong in comparison to upstream riparians" (Homer-Dixon 1994). This is exactly
the case in the Nile basin considering the vast differences between the countries in use of water
resources and economic indicators (see table 3).
Table 3: Irrigation and economic indicators of Ethiopia and Egypt
Indicators
Irrigated land as % of total cultivated area 2
Irrigated land in ha2
of which located in the Nile Basin 3
Water withdrawal rate (m3/capita/year) 1
Employment in agricultural sector (%)in 2005 2
GNI per capita in 2009 (US$)4
Ethiopia
Egypt
2.5
100
289,530 3,422,178
76,000 3,080,000
48
1202
81
31
330
2,070
(numbers compiled from 1Gebeyehu 2004, 2FAO 2005, 3Kloos & Legesse 2010)
4
Worldbank 2010)
The area along the Nile in Egypt and Sudan is one of the largest contiguous regions with high
irrigation density in the world and Egypt, as the downstream riparian, is by far the most
economically powerful. The total water withdrawal for agricultural, domestic and industrial
purposes in Egypt is estimated to be around 63.8 km3, which equals 3,794 % of the internally
available renewable water resources (FAO 2005:63) and the vast majority of this water is
taken from the Nile.
Obviously this disparity also manifests itself in the most vital areas of life:
"In Ethiopia, with the lowest HDI, a larger proportion of the population (78%) did not
use potable water than in any other Nile country. In Egypt, only 2 % of the population
was without access to potable water" (Kloos & Legesse 2010: 35).
Such inequalities have a long history and are entwined with the history of control over the Nile
waters. Since the beginning of agriculture in the region of Egypt and Sudan around five
millennia ago, the Nile has been the basis of life for most of the area's inhabitants. About 2000
33
years later, artificial irrigation started and until the early 19th century this way of production
continued without greater changes. It was not until the colonial interference of the British that
Egypt started to systematically build dams and barrages. But by the end of the century the
further expansion of agricultural lands was being constrained by water availability during low
water season. As a consequence, to provide annual storage the first Aswan Dam was built in
1903 (Howell & Allan 1994: 65).
In 1929, Sudan through its colonial representatives and Egypt signed the first treaty
exclusively dealing with the allocation of Nile water, allotting 48 billion meters 3 of water to
Egypt and four billion to Sudan (Swain 2002: 296). After a phase of political tensions due to
the unequal distribution, the negotiations resumed, and in 1959 a new agreement was signed
that set the annual runoff at 82 billion meters3. Of these, 55.5 billion were allocated to Egypt
and 18.5 billion to Sudan with the remaining resources being calculated to get lost due to
evaporation (ibid). The treaty also included provisions regarding the planned Aswan High
Dam, a gigantic project to control the Nile water that started immediately after the signing. The
treaty assigned the entire average annual flow of the Nile to be shared among Egypt and the
Sudan - thereby neglecting the rights of the remaining eight riparians. Ethiopia was allocated
none of the Nile's resources although it contributes 80% of the total annual flow, making it the
most dangerous actor for Egypt.
As a consequence, Egypt has long since been unwilling to change the status of affairs by any
form of cooperative management together with its upstream neighbours. While following its
unilateral goals and projects on the Nile, Egypt has historically tried to prevent any upstream
development to preserve its own control. However, since the beginning of the 1990s, Ethiopia
started to actually become a threat to Egypt's water supply since the country started its own
irrigation projects on the Blue Nile to satisfy the food demands of its growing population.
Despite the Egyptian and Sudanese protests, Ethiopia insisted on its sovereign right to make
use of the resources within its own borders. The quarrel reached its peak when Egypt managed
to prevent the African Development Bank from financing Ethiopia's planned water projects
(ibid: 298). Finally, after decades of political tensions over the use of the Nile water, the
establishment of the Nile Basin Initiative in 1999 represents the most promising attempt of a
basin-wide cooperation to date, aiming at developing "the Nile Basin water resources in a
sustainable and equitable way to ensure prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples"
(NBI 2011).
Also global politics came into play when the World Bank, promoting transboundary river
management in the sense of IWRM, pressed Egypt to change its policies on the issue of the
Nile by radically cutting its financial support. So even though "there is not yet a new water
management regime in the basin, [...] Ethiopia continues to develop its bargaining power vis-àvis its downstream neighbours and within the Nile Basin Initiative" (Cascão 2008:27).
34
Considering the sensitivity of the Blue Nile water on the political level, it is important to note
that of all other water uses irrigation for agriculture is most resource consuming in terms of per
capita requirements as well as global withdrawal "(up to 97% in some countries), followed by
industry with 20% on average and domestic withdrawals amounting to 9%" (GWSP 2005: 31).
At the same time it plays the most important role in achieving food security in many country's
food policies (Gebeyehu 2004: 2).
Being Ethiopia's first large-scale irrigation scheme designed as farmer self-managed as well as
self-financed and the first large-scale scheme in a whole row of planned projects in the Nile
Basin, the Koga project is an important experiment in the national IWRM. Thus, it has gained
wide attention not only in Ethiopia but on the international level as well, even making it into
the Wall Street Journal in 2003:
"The Koga River project is being cast as a ‘confidence builder' to show that upstream
uses don't necessarily hurt downstream populations. Ethiopian engineers calculate the
Koga irrigation would use less than one-tenth of 1% of the Nile flow reaching the
Ethiopia-Sudan border" (Wall Street Journal 2003, cited in Haileselassie et al. 2008:
132).
Also keeping the challenges of transboundary water management in mind, its success will be
crucial for further development of the sector as
"[…] achieving implementation targets will be viewed by the international community
as an indication of Ethiopia's capacity to handle similar capital-intensive schemes in
the future. In fact, the delivery on its responsibilities to effectively carry through the
Koga project as envisaged is regarded by lending organizations as the nation's litmus
test to successfully bargain and attract major loans for future investment in the Nile
Basin and elsewhere" (Gebre, Getachew & McCartney 2008: 25).
Thus, the political relevance of the project on an inter-state level is to strengthen Ethiopia's
bargaining position within the hydropolitics of the Nile and to secure foreign investment and
donor support.
6.3
The Politics of Water Policy in the Context of Sovereign States
While policies and paradigms can be formed and decided upon within global institutions, the
actual policy making and implementation takes place at the national level. It has been
described above that the global policies could constrain agency as well as enable certain
actions. In this section the impact of IWRM and climate change on the Ethiopian government's
agency shall be described with regards to the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) and
the national Water Sector Strategy.
The Ethiopian NAPA is a direct reaction to the global politics of climate change. It will be
analysed briefly to point out in which way the Ethiopian government has been able to
capitalize global policies on climate change for tackling the national problem of food security.
Modelling of climate trends for the Blue Nile Basin as a whole, present a rather diverse picture
(Fig. 6), indeed adding uncertainty rather than making adaptation easier.
35
While literature often tends to assume an increase in dry spells (Awulachew et al. 2005: 4;
Eguavoen 2009: 4), for the research area located in the highlands of Amhara Regional State
scenarios suggest a probability of increased rainfall which could benefit crop yields and thus
food security (Bates et al. 2008, Kim et al. 2008).
Hence, increased drought is not one of the probable effects of climate change in the Blue Nile
basin but uncertainty is a major constraint in adaptation to expected changes.
Adaptation to climate change can be understood as the "deliberate adjustments in natural or
human systems and behaviours
Fig. 6: Climate projections for Ethiopia
to reduce the risks to people's
lives and livelihoods" (FAO
2008: 8). Besides the decreased
probability of dry spells and
droughts due to climate change
irrigation is still incorporated
into the Ethiopian NAPA as
one of the most important
adjustments in the agricultural
sector to ensure food security
(MoWR, NMA 2007; Ludi
2009: 6). The main reason for
this
is,
according
to
the
document itself, that:
"Current climate variability is
already imposing a significant challenge to Ethiopia by affecting food security, water
and energy supply, poverty reduction and sustainable development efforts, as well as
by causing
degradation
andvariables
natural disasters. For example the impacts
Spatial distributions
of natural
average resource
annual changes
in climate
of
past
droughts
such
as
that
of
the
1972/73,
1984 and 2002/03 are still fresh in the
and runoff for the 2050s
memories of many Ethiopians. […] These challenges are likely to be exacerbated by
anthropogenic climate change" (MoWR, NMA 2007).
The AfDB Appraisal Report on the Koga project, that was finalized the same year the
UNFCCC decided on the NAPAs, states the same rational behind the Koga project: "The GOE
[Government of Ethiopia] decision to accord the project a priority stems from frequent drought
and food shortages" (AfDB 2001). The problem of droughts as a natural event is, according to
the NAPA, also identified as the most important reason to engage in water storage:
"Ethiopia is highly vulnerable to drought. Drought is the single most important climate
related natural hazard impacting the country from time to time. Drought occurs
anywhere in the world but its damage is not as severe as in Africa in general and in
Ethiopia in particular" (MoWR, NMA 2007: 5).
Looking at both the long history of famines in Ethiopia and more recent catastrophes, this is
indeed the case (see Fig. 7). The decisive question is why the impact of natural events such as
36
droughts is more disastrous in Ethiopia than in other countries - otherwise these impacts
cannot be mitigated effectively.
One explanation is the combination of lacking infrastructure as well as institutions, that could
alleviate the impacts of rainfall variability, and a lack of functioning markets, that could
counterbalance food deficits by
Fig. 7: Distribution of people affected by natural disasters in Africa,
1975 - 2001
supplying agricultural goods
from
areas
that
are
not
affected. As a consequence, the
country's economy is highly
dependent on rains (Grey &
Sadoff 2007: 557), as can be
seen in Fig.8. Based on this
explanation, the strategy of
making water storage a high
priority in order to mitigate
variations
in
precipitation
seems justified. To legitimately
engage in water storage the
government has to take into
account another line of global
politics, i.e. the IWRM paradigm. The national Water Resources Strategy states that it is
"promoting the principles of integrated water resources management" (MoWR 2001: 2),
including demand management and the participatory approach. The most important objectives,
however, are "improving the living standard and general socio-economic well being of the
Source:
Ethiopian
EM-DAT:
people"The
andOFDA/CRED
"realising food
International
self-sufficiency
Disasterand food security in the country" (ibid).
Database, www.emdat.be
cited in MoWR, NMA (2007)
37
Fig. 8: Rainfall, GDP and agricultural GDP for Ethiopia
Source: World Bank 2006, cited in Grey & Sadoff 2007: 558
The ministries involved in policy making regarding water storage for food security are mainly
the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development (MoARD), since irrigated agriculture is obviously a crosscutting theme located
at the interface of their responsibilities. This situation leads to quite some disagreement
between the involved agencies, which contradicts the allegedly integrated approach (see
section 8.4). Also, it complicates the tackling of lacking infrastructure and institutions to
mitigate rainfall variability.
However, from a political ecology perspective, the roots of the problem are not lacking
infrastructure but rather of a political nature. Recent famines in the region are at least partly an
outcome of political instability, as the current disaster in Somalia and the rest of the Horn
clearly and sadly shows. Moreover, the impact of global markets (e.g. livestock import bans
and the fall of the coffee prices) and a lack of representation and participation drastically
increase the vulnerability to shocks, "which is known to arise from political marginalization
rather than either technical deficiencies or the vagaries of the weather" (Lautze & Maxwell
2007: 239). This applies for marginalized groups both on the national level (such as the
pastoral and southern minorities) and the local level (including women and the poorest sectors
of society). "In brief, the real issues underlying the persistence of famine are about the lack of
political inclusion, not the lack of technical interventions" (Lautze & Maxwell 2007: 240).
In the water sector, with the participation approach in IWRM this problem is being addressed
by the Ethiopian government - at least theoretically. The empirical part will examine how the
participation of the most vulnerable groups into decision making processes is implemented in
practice.
It should be noted here that the NAPA document referring to historic droughts and famines
actually addresses climate variability and uses the term interchangeably with climate change,
38
although these do actually refer to different concepts. Climate variability is usually employed
to describe natural variations in the climate. These occur on all spatial scales, both locally as
well as globally, and "on all time scales, from one year to the next, as well as from one decade,
century or millennium to the next" (Ghil 2002: 544). In contrast to that, the UNFCCC's
definition of climate change is:
"a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that
alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural
climate variability observed over comparable time periods" (UNFCCC 1992: 3,
accentuations by the author).
The politics of climate change can be used by Ethiopia to address the much older problem of
climate variability with financial support from the international community that might
otherwise not have been available. Also it allows for agenda-setting of water storage as a
national adaptation strategy that otherwise might have been too politically sensitive to address
with regards to interstate hydropolitics (see section 6.2).
6.4
The Everyday Politics of Water Resources Management
Due to the large set-up of the Koga project quite a range of actors and institutions are involved
on the operational level, these include smallholder farmers and commercial farmers who can
be members or non-members of farmers' organizations like cooperatives. Also, a range of local
representatives of state agencies are involved, i.e. street level bureaucrats and on top there is
the project management staff responsible for construction and supervision of irrigation
management, operation and maintenance.
In this section, each of these groups shall briefly be described regarding their interests in and
influence on irrigation in the Koga project.
6.4.1 Farmers
Smallholder Farmers and Agriculture in the Koga Area
The envisaged "beneficiaries" of the project consist of around 14,000 rural households.
Agricultural production makes up the lion share of subsistence for the rural population, so the
high variability of rainfall14l poses a major problem, as it leads to a high vulnerability amongst
small-scale farmers who rely on rain-fed irrigation.
14
Annual rainfall in Amhara region varies between 800 and 2,200 mm, with a mean value of about
1,420 mm for the entire region (NMA 2010) and about 1,800 mm for Merawi (Yassin 2009).
39
According to project documents and interviewees' statements, the majority of farmers in the
area used traditional means of cultivation until the scheme was introduced i.e. oxen for
ploughing, river diversion or abstraction as irrigation for horticulture if any and the amount of
Fig. 9: Dominant crops under the rainfed system
chemicals
considerably low. Despite the
growth
vegetables
3%
teff
3%
fertilizer,
insecticides and pesticides was
% of total land use
(Source: DHWSES 2008)
pulses,
oilseeds
10%
nonagricultural
20%
like
in
consumption,
total
fertilizer
the
average
nutrient used per hectare of
cultivated area in Ethiopia is
maize
41%
finger
millet
23%
one of lowest in the world due
to high prices and lack of
supply. Accordingly, yields are
generally low (average cereal
yields were at 7 qt. per hectare
% of total agricultural production
(Source: Hagos et al: 6)
according to the Feasibility
Study from 1995). Most of the
produce was consumed for
oilseeds
fruits
vege-
household subsistence and if a
part of the harvest was sold it usually consisted of horticulture crops like peppers, shallots and
tomatoes. In good years when there was a surplus production parts of the rain-fed cereals like
maize, teff, wheat or finger millet which account for the lion share of agricultural production in
both the research area and ARNS as a whole (cf. CSA 2009) were also sold.
The typical cropping pattern, as shown in figure 9, before irrigation as lined out in the Cost
Recovery Study corresponds to the data found during o: about two thirds of land were used for
cereals (maize 41%, finger millet 23.5% and teff 3%), almost twenty percent for nonagricultural purposes like pasture and woodland - mostly occupied by the widespread
eucalyptus trees, while only about three percent had been allocated for vegetables (field data,
DHWSES 2008: 52).
This cropping pattern is meant to change considerably with irrigation. The project design
foresees a shift to marketable products like vegetables and farmers are expected to change their
production accordingly. The final goal is to achieve a commercial mode of production that will
enable farmers to sell their produce profitably.
Smallholder Farmers and Livestock
40
Another important source of livelihood affected by the project in the Koga area is animal
husbandry. During the feasibility study average ownership was 3.6 and 2.2 of cattle and oxen
per household (AIL 1995), respectively:
Ownership in %
These
Table
Oxen
ownership
in the command area
No.4:of
Oxen
Source:
DHWSES
(2008:50)
Male
Female
numbers,
however, obscure the existence
0
7.90
57. 36
1
21.44
22.90
2
46.35
18.54
3
13.5
1. 20
11.05
0
4 and more
average
of
significant
variations
between households and sexes
as a more detailed presentation
of recent data shows (see table
4). It can be seen here, that less
than half of the women in the
area own oxen at all which
constrains
them
from
ploughing
the
fields
themselves or from supplying
the oxen when a man - either a
relative or hired workforce - is
doing the ploughing for them.
McCann points out that the
enormous importance of oxen ownership "rendered the control over land itself a relatively
weak factor in determining who gained access to the full set of agricultural factors of
production. The technology of the plough and its exclusive placement within the male domain
conditioned the relative importance of land versus other forms of property" (McCann
1995:78). The resulting relative inferiority of women in farming will be discussed in detail
below. In any case, the high amount of livestock in the overall area is interfering with
irrigation and vice versa due to needed grazing areas and the limited land available. While
extensive grazing areas have been inundated for the dam reservoir, areas that could be used for
grazing during dry season before are now being cropped more or less all year round. With
reduced grazing land available farmers are obliged to feed crop residues to livestock which
then cannot be used as natural fertilizer anymore, in an area where nutrient depletion plays an
increasing role (Haileselassie et al. 2008: 16) and farmers do not have the financial capacity to
purchase sufficient amounts of artificial fertilizer. The incompatibility of such extensive
livestock ownership and intensified agriculture has already been pointed out in the Feasibility
Study and its implications for peasants will be discussed below.
Commercial Farmers
41
Although presently rather a small phenomenon in the Koga scheme, individual commercial
farmers have started to recognize it as a lucrative investment area and managed to arrange with
local farmers to get access to irrigated land within the scheme. They rent land and then hire
wage labourers. However, this does not necessarily result in higher employment rates for
landless local people. One interviewee, who rented 7 ha and employed 25 daily labourers,
stated that he brought these from both Addis Abeba and Woreta, where he had been doing
business before, because he already had experience in working with them.
Membership in the Irrigation Cooperative is mostly not with the commercial farmers
themselves but with those farmers whom they rented the land from. Several of the commercial
farmers voiced worries that with such an arrangement their concerns would not be heard in the
organization. According to interviewees, there had been discussions about the issue of rented
land and membership in the organization. It was decided that only in case a person rented the
land for a longer period of time (5 years and more) the user instead of the owner should
become member ("double membership" of users and owners is not allowed). It seems,
however, that the issue of maximum landholding was not raised at all. Therefore, no
regulations are in place to prevent individuals from gaining access to exceeding amounts of
land in comparison to the average.
The produce of commercial farmers consists mainly of vegetables such as cabbage, tomatoes
and onions which are usually sold to bulk purchasers from Bahir Dar and Addis Abeba, since
the local demand for such vegetables is rather low due to the higher prices.
While the commercial production neither benefits the local communities in providing products
for a more diversified diet (since most farmers cannot afford to buy them) nor in providing
jobs, the surrounding farmers still profit from the knowledge exchange:
"I learned from my neighbour how to raise improved seedlings of maize. First I had to
buy them from him but now I can do it on my own."15
It remains to be seen, whether the asymmetric competition between smallholder farmers and
commercial producers will become a problem, once the foreseen shift to commercial
agriculture will take place.
6.4.3 Project Management and Street Level Bureaucrats
The Project Management Unit located at the outskirts of Merawi town is a large complex with
several office buildings, laboratories and accommodation for the staff. The complex is
equipped with its own water supply, a car park and a small bar. During dry season 2010, about
1,000 people were employed by the project in total, including around 45 drivers, skilled and
unskilled labourers and about 40 managers, engineers, accountants, mechanics etc. who were
engaged directly by WWDSE (cf. WWDSE 2010). The Koga Irrigation and Drainage
15
Interview Kudmi, February 13, 2010
42
Management Office (KIDMO), responsible for capacity building and training of farmers, is
also located on the grounds of the project. The complex including office buildings and some
vehicles will be handed over to the "beneficiaries" or their representatives (depending on the
how the management will be organized in the end) after the finalization of construction works.
Also part of the Project Steering Committee, are a number of ministries that are involved with
the implementation of the project. These are locally represented by what one could call streetlevel bureaucrats. The term, coined by Lipsky (2010), refers to the employees of public
agencies who actually implement a policy. Their actions in implementation can produce an
outcome which may be significantly unlike the one originally intended by policy makers.
Lipsky stipulates that in this function, street-level bureaucrats are a part of the policy-making
community and should be seen as exercisers of political power. He further states that for most
people interaction with the government takes place almost exclusively through the interaction
with such local employees. While Lipsky applies the concept mainly to Western countries, this
is also true for the context of this study. State intervention through irrigation development in
Koga is experienced mainly through interactions with staff from the following agencies:
The Amhara Bureau of Water Resources (BoWR), as the local representation of the Ministry
of Water Resources (MoWR), is involved because the construction of large dams falls within
its mandate. In some of the trainings for farmers, staff from the MoWR appeared as trainers.
The Amhara Bureau of Agricultural and Rural Development (Board), the local branch of the
Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoARD), is responsible for the watershed component
of the project. The trainings for farmers is conducted by former Board staff as well.
The Amhara Region Environmental Protection, Land Use and Administration Authority is
responsible for the relocation and compensation processes, i.e. especially relevant for resettled
households. The Amhara Region Cooperatives Promotion Bureau (CPB), the local
representation of the Cooperative Promotion Agency (CPA), has the mandate to organize
farmers in cooperatives.
The sheer number of actors on the operational level implies that, accordingly, their interests
are rather diverse. Necessarily, the efforts to push one's own interests through in the process of
establishing global paradigms on the local level leads to some struggles between the various
actors. The next two chapters will deal with the question which elements of the discourse
trigger conflicts and between which actors these struggles take place.
43
VII
DISPARITIES WITHIN
In the introduction to the prior chapter it was already pointed out that the employed
categorization of actors may suggest a false image of homogenous groups. This image is
obviously oversimplified and does not reflect the complex overlaps between categories and
differences within groups of actors. While it is important to highlight the existence of different
groups within the category of small-scale farmers it should be noted that the problem cannot be
solved by opening up more subcategories. Many of the actors described in this section simply
do not fit into one single category, but rather hold various roles at once.
The following section shall therefore not engage in analytical fragmentation of the local
communities but rather highlight the imbalance of power within those and how such
inequalities are mediated by the introduction of irrigation and its institutionalization.
7.1
Women and Water
With the discovery of women as water users and managers especially in the domestic domain
in the 1970s and ‘80s, the water sector was "among the first to recognize women's potential
contribution to development" (Coles & Wallace 2005: 3). With principle number three, the
role of women was also explicitly included in the Dublin principles and the following IWRM
paradigm.
According to the Global Gender Gap Reports gender equity in Ethiopia is among the lowest in
Africa (Hausmann et al. 2010). Therefore, the strengthening of women is considered a crucial
point in most development projects in Ethiopia. It has, however, almost become an automatism
to pay lip service to "gender mainstreaming" and to see the issue as a technical problem that
can be overcome by applying certain tools of gender frameworks (Coles & Wallace 2005: 7).
The Koga appraisal report (AfDB 2001) also envisaged gender mainstreaming as a project
"outcome":
"A positive impact on women will be social and economic empowerment as well as
improved family livelihoods" and that "farmers' participation will be promoted at all
stages, taking into account the needs of rural women".
This section examines how the introduction of irrigation has impacted on women and how the
goal of women empowerment has been pursued in the implementation.
7.1.1 Women, Ploughing and Participation
In the rural context, the involvement of women into decision-making fora is especially
difficult:
"The involvement of women water users in stakeholder consultations and forums
demands specific attention and approaches. The current tools used in multi-stakeholder
consultations are mainly suited for an educated, literate group, and will require
adaptation for use at the local level" (GWA, UNDP 2006: 30).
44
This bias in participation of stakeholders is also present in the institutional set-up of the Koga
Irrigation Cooperative. Not only are women severely under-represented, or not represented at
all, in leading positions of the organisation (during the time fieldwork was conducted no leader
position was filled by a woman), they also hardly participate in elections of representatives.
When asked about the amount of women in meetings for elections, one female interviewee
answered that "there were a lot of women, at least five"16 - out of an estimated 200 people in
total. Furthermore she said that her decision for one of the candidates was not based on her
personal preference, but that she "raised the hand when all the others raised their hand".
Another one pointed out that she had been wondering why she had been invited to a "men's
meeting" in the first place.
This statement reflects the widespread perception in the region that women do not really
qualify as farmers in general, and therefore should stay out of farming-related decision
making:
"In terms of semantics, throughout Ethiopia, both within government bureaus and
communities, the term 'farmer' is used synonymously with the word for 'man'. It is
clear that whether rural women contribute to the process of agricultural production to a
greater or lesser extent, they are generally perceived as marginal players, particularly
by those individuals with significant influence on development activities such as
bureau heads, development agents and peasant associations" (CISP 1997 : 8, cited
from Frank 1999:3).
As mentioned before, women are denied oxen-ownership through cultural taboo, leaving them
without the chance to participate in the full set of agricultural activities even if they own land
themselves: "Those who did not exercise rights over animal traction [...] through gender (all
women) had little opportunity to exercise the de jure rights they might have enjoyed through
the land tenure system" (McCann 1995: 78). Thus, female-headed households have a
specifically difficult standing within the farming community. On top of the prohibition to
plough, they are also marginalized with regard to the access to land, inputs and labour force.
The situation is aggravated by the virtually non-existing female participation in the
cooperative. When asked if they were a member of the Irrigation Cooperative, women in maleheaded households usually responded rather perplexed that they "of course" were not. Since
only one member per household was to participate in the cooperative, this was naturally their
husband. Thus, women in female-headed households were usually the only women
participating at all in the Cooperative's group meetings attended by the author (i.e. zonal
meetings and water user group meetings). In this case, however, the term "participation"
actually describes a situation of mere attendance. The proportion of active contributions by
women in these meetings tended to be minimal if any, even if explicitly asked for.
16
Interview, Kudmi: March 18, 2010
45
7.1.2 Women and Domestic Water
Not adequately involving women into the institutions for water management also has
implications for the enforcement of its rules. Since women are the ones concerned with the
supply of water for practically all purposes other than irrigation, i.e. domestic water uses like
drinking, cooking, washing, gardening as well as livestock watering, they are most likely to
violate rules that prohibit the abstraction of water for these purposes from the irrigation
structures. Other sources of available water have to be accessed by walking and carrying water
- which is generally of rather poor quality - back to the homestead. This takes them between 60
and 180 minutes, depending on the location of their homes, with an average frequency of at
least 5 trips per day (interviews, cf. WSP 2008).
Thus, ownership among women has to be extremely high to prevent them from taking readily
available water from the canals in front of their houses.
Unsurprisingly, women and children under the observation of their mothers do not comply to
these rules even if informed about their existence - which most of them are according to their
own statements: "Although we are not even allowed to take one spoon of water we still wash
our clothes and the children in the canal and take water from it to the house."17
This issue has also been raised in the attended trainings and especially in zonal meetings where
members were repeatedly asked to inform their families about the regulations and to enforce
their abidance.
First of all, it is questionable whether the prohibition of withdrawal for domestic purposes
especially in the head-end command areas, where people's homesteads are located only a few
meters away from the irrigation structures, is actually realistic. And secondly, whether this rule
would have been adopted in the first place if a more participatory approach in formulating bylaws would have been applied.
Case studies from other countries imply that explicitly allowing for the use of production water
on household level in areas with a lack of alternative sources of water supply or water storage
can significantly facilitate the maintenance and improvement of livelihoods. Moreover, it can
advance the sustainability of irrigation schemes by creating incentives for the entire
community to maintain irrigation structures (cf. Moriarty et al. 2004).
Irrigation water is never an end in itself but a means to improve agriculture for one's
livelihood. Water is neither a single purpose resource only used for agriculture but just as
much for maintaining and improving other bases of existence. Water obviously affects
household production and income earning opportunities far in excess of agricultural production
alone. Improved domestic water supply has a strong association with a decrease in the average
time spent fetching water, resulting in significant time saved for household members. Besides
the fact, that this could enable women to participate in off- and non-farm employment, female
17
Interview, March 27 2011
46
interviewees reported that they spend significantly more time for farming now than before
irrigation. Therefore, if an actual integrated approach to water resources management was
exercised, irrigation water could serve people's needs far better:
"The sector […] also needs to take account of the importance of both small-scale
productive uses for households and other non-agricultural water uses, which can even
have higher priority for the users, such as domestic uses" (ibid: 22).
Further means to facilitate access to water on household level had been discussed, but no
specific solutions had been found during the time of research. The issue of domestic water will
remain to be a problem, unless significant progress will be made in that direction, since only
Fig. 10: Elderly woman fetching water from shallow well
few can afford to dig their own
shallow wells such as the one
shown in figure 10. The vast
"I am
lucky. of
Myhouseholds
son works in
majority
in the
the area
cityhad
andno he
cantogive
access
secured
money
tosources
the family.
He2008).
gave
water
(WSP
us money so we can dig a
well. Now getting water is
easier.
Not Including
like before.Women
I had in
7.1.3
to walk
two hours
to get water
Decision
Making:
Hit-orbefore.
Miss?Sometimes, we give
water
neighbours - but
Thetomarginalisation
of not
women
now.
in the project has been tried to
Thiscombat
time ofwith
the year
is if
ratherthere
simple
hardly
for us."
not enough
naïve means
like asking the
elders of the irrigated kebele to
March
17, 2010 in
send more women to trainings. As this did not happen, the facilitators asked
the participants
one training session for the reasons for the low participation of women in trainings and
meetings. Thereupon members of the group stated that first of all "mostly zonal and
quaternary canal leaders do attend the trainings and since none of these are female there are
no women in the training"18. The kebele leader added that if they selected women for trainings
the husbands of the women would not let them attend - since that was "none of their business".
This reaction shows how the concept to primarily select respected elders, priests and leaders of
the organisation as communication channels for effective distribution of the knowledge gained
in trainings, only makes sense at first glance.. De facto, it leads to an exclusion of marginalised
groups like women from decision making processes and knowledge transfer.
18
Training session for Inamirt, March 3, 2010
47
This problem had already been pointed out in the feasibility study 15 years ago and,
accordingly, the AfDB (2001) appraisal report states that:
"The project will strive to balance the participation of both men and women, in order
to achieve sustainable development and increased food production. However, specific
and focused intervention will be targeted to involve and attract women in the project
activities such as, representation in WUAs, access to and control of Land User Rights,
livestock production and agriculture, natural resources conservation activities. In
addition, women will have equal access to technical training related to project
activities, and micro-credit".
The "specific and focused intervention" can obviously not be achieved by (male) agronomists
or engineers. The lack of both focus on and funding for human resources development in
general, and for gender-mainstreaming in particular, leads to a situation where project staff is
naturally overstrained with tasks that go well beyond their scope of duties and expertise.
Thus, as long as no specific gender approach is applied and financing is attributed to make sure
that increases of human capital in form of knowledge and competences in irrigation will also
reach marginalised groups, the project runs the risk of consolidating social inequalities rather
than alleviating these.
7.2
Relocatees and Hosts
In Ethiopia, population displacement and resettlement in the name of development has been on
the increase since the 1960s, sometimes with devastating results.
The negative impacts of development-induced displacement have been well established in
various studies, both in general (e.g. Cernea & Dowell 2000, Ohta & Gebre 2005, DeWet
2006) and for dam construction in particular (e.g. DeWet 2005, Scudder 2005).
Parallel to the dam debate which identified forced resettlement as one of the major negative
social impacts of large dams, most of the scientific discussion of resettlement and
displacement in Ethiopia has concentrated on large-scale interventions affecting thousands of
people and involving long distances between their place of origin and the new settlements (e.g.
Pankhurst & Piguet 2009). In the Koga case, with about 800 households resettled, a rather
small number of people is affected. Also their original and new homesteads are not far apart.
Therefore, the issues resulting from resettlement in this case do not resemble those of other
large dam projects. Nevertheless, the relocated households faced a difficult situation as a result
of delayed and insufficient compensation and social marginalization.
Today, resettlement and land re-distribution are legally feasible through the aforementioned
land laws set by the Ethiopian Constitution from 1995 and the Federal Rural Land
Administration Proclamation from 2005, which vest all land rights in the state. In line with
what has been discussed above with regard to irrigation development, "the context of drought
and food insecurity in the mid-1980s and again in the early 2000s added a further rationale and
48
impetus" (ibid: xxxi) both for resettlement programmes and development induced
displacement due to dam construction for irrigation and hydropower.
Although the state is entitled to take people's land away and has done so in the past without
compensating for their losses, the current legislation grants compensation payments:
"Holder of rural land who is evicted for purpose of public use shall be given
compensation proportional to the development he has made on the land and the
property acquired thereon" (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 2005: 3139).
Development projects like the Koga case, especially when financed by international
institutions, obviously have to adhere to such principles. Appropriate compensation payments
were therefore an integral part of the project design. However, the design and implementation
do not match, resulting in difficulties for relocated households:
The original calculations were not fully met in practice. For example, in the case of lost
homesteads, the compensation was initially estimated to be around 8,000 ETB for one house
but the actual payments only amounted to between 3,000 to 5,000 ETB, which did not even
suffice to pay for the construction of a new house (Eguavoen & Tesfai 2011).
Besides the difficulties for households to earn their livelihood without access to land and under
uncertain conditions, they also had to cope with the social integration in new surroundings.
The relationship between relocatees and their host communities has been characterized by "a
sharp conflict of interest" (Gebre, Getachew & McCartney 2008: 40) in the early phase of
resettlement. Host communities were forced to give away a portion of their land to the
displaced farmers. The unwillingness to give away land has been mainly the result of the hosts'
assumption that resettlers would receive land on top of the compensation payments, leaving
them wealthier than before:
"What aggravates the unfairness of the whole exercise is that those who obtained
compensation for their property are in a position to benefit too much by using the
compensation money in business transactions" (interviewee cited from ibid: 14f).
This led to hostilities especially towards those resettlers who moved to the outskirts of Merawi
town (around 160 households), where they were easy to spot due to their "typically rural"
appearance in clothing, hairstyle and manners (Eguavoen & Tesfai 2011).
Also these relocatees found it especially hard to find wage labour in the urban areas. Because
of their low education levels, the majority did not have many choices: most men looked for
construction jobs in the irrigation scheme or tried to start a transport business with donkey
carts. Even if they found a job, these were not well-paid and the salary was hardly sufficient to
feed the family. Some women have therefore begun to produce alcohol for sale to add to
household income. This disruption of the traditional rural labour distribution in many cases led
to frustration and domestic as well as social problems (Eguavoen & Tesfai 2011, personal
communication). Some of the relocated households had arranged land exchange privately long
before the official resettlement began. This enabled them to legalize their homesteads at the
49
municipality before moving to Merawi. In contrast, those farmers who had to organize land
when already being pressed for time often had to engage in illegal land arrangements and
found it much harder to come to terms with the new situation. The same is true for access to
farm land, sought in order to bridge the period until land was being allocated and irrigation
could start (ibid).
Thus, while the whole process of relocation differs a lot from other resettlement projects (in
which households were moved to entirely different regions, among other ethnic groups or in
geographical circumstances which they were not familiar with), many resettlers faced a
difficult situation nevertheless - also because they did not receive the promised support.
However, the fact that proactive households found it easier to cope with resettlement
underlines the importance of people's agency in processes of intervention.
7.3
Spatial Marginalization
Spatial marginalization is a term that Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) used to describe the
process of dominant classes gaining the control over more fertile land, thereby pushing others
onto marginalized land (p. 23). While they explicitly ascribe this process to the Ethiopian
context of land degradation, the marginalization that will be described here follows a different
dynamic altogether.
Regardless of the quality of land or the power of its owner, the mere location of one's
farmstead might turn out to be advantageous or disadvantageous with the introduction of
irrigation. Whether or not one's land would be irrigated, was a rather arbitrary process, but
nevertheless affecting the equity between up and downstream or head and tail end users,
respectively. Thus, in the following it will be examined, how the geographical location relative
to the irrigation infrastructure influences the benefits farmers gain from the scheme and how
the different spatial micro levels influence each other.
50
An important overarching issue in this regard is the prevalence of water-borne diseases like
malaria and bilharzias that are likely to increase with water storage. Figure 11 shows the
quantity of malaria cases in
Fig. 11: Seasonal and spatial distribution of Malaria cases in
vicinity to the Koka reservoir
another
Ethiopian
irrigation
scheme. The probability of
infection
rises
significantly
with increasing vicinity to the
dam.
Thus,
investment
in
health facilities is essential in
order
to
prevent
negative
outcomes - given that at the
time of research the only
curative health facility around
was in Merawi. This means
that the average distance a
patient had to travel to access
Source: Kibret et al. (2009: 18)
medical services, was about 15
kilometres (WSP 2008: 161,
household survey). Considering that these numbers present an average, one has to take into
account that with increasing distance from Merawi the access to health (and all other) services
decreases. This is especially true for the more tail-end communities and those upstream of the
dam, who are also most likely to be affected by an increased exposure to water-borne diseases.
The following sections will discuss further issues regarding such spatial differences in the
irrigation project.
7.3.1 Up and Downstream Communities
Up and downstream communities here do not refer to the basin scale but to the micro level, i.e.
upstream from the dam and downstream from the dam. The name of the project "Koga
Irrigation and Watershed Management" already suggests that there are two components to be
implemented: irrigation on the one hand and watershed19 management on the other. According
to planning documents both components are supposed to be treated as equally important.
Reality however, looks different as project staff explains:
19
The watershed in this context is referring to the drainage basin above the reservoir of the dam.
51
"It's a matter of focus. The importance given to the watershed and to the command
area is not the same. Mostly they are concerned, they are worried, they are interested
in the downstream area. Due to this there have been some activities for motivating the
local farmers to engage in soil protection and the like but there has not been actual
investment like promised."20
According to plans the watershed development did not only include "duties" like soil
conservation and afforestation for the upstream communities, but allowed for capacity
development in the upstream areas. An extension package consisting of crop improvement,
livestock development, watering point development, and the construction of infrastructure
such as roads and health establishments had been envisaged. Nevertheless, for any of these
activities focus and financing has been insufficient, making a collaboration of the reluctant
upstream farmers even more unlikely.
This is an important issue also for downstream communities as one has to consider the
watershed management component in order to evaluate the overall sustainability of the project.
According to the appraisal report, soil loss reduction of 50% was planned to be achieved by the
watershed management. Although land degradation in the area is not as severe as in other parts
of the highlands a complete lack of erosion control means could lead to a shortened lifespan of
the dam or a need of capital infrastructure investment earlier than initially planned.
7.3.2 Head and Tail End Communities
The terms of head and tail end refer to the location of a community within the irrigation
scheme, i.e. head end communities are located further upstream the main canal than tail end
users and are therefore closer to the water source.
The introduction of irrigation institutions and corresponding water rights can reinforce spatial
inequalities between head and tail end communities in access to the resource. Those who are
first organized into cooperatives or WUAs - usually head-end communities as it is also the
case in Koga - get registered as official resource users first: Therefore, they do not only gain a
better economic position due to the earlier use of irrigation but also a better bargaining position
within the institution21.This dynamic has indirectly been criticized in project documents
concerned with setting up the irrigation institution in Koga. According to these, the founding
of the cooperative has neither been democratic nor representative since only 852 of about
14,000 household heads 22 were founding members and participated in the elections of the
board i.e. the Management Committee of the cooperative. The study revealed that on a
20
Interview with watershed component staff, March 10, 2010.
21
For empirical studies on that dynamic see Van Koppen et al. (2004).
22
The cited working paper (MMD 2005) stated a number of 7,000 household to be part of the project,
which is in line with earlier project documents. However, more recent statements by AfDB, report
14,000 households to be included within the command area (AfDB 2011).
52
farmers' meeting in Chihona Command Area "less than 10 persons from a total of 525 (304
men and 221 women) knew of the KIC and its duties and responsibilities" (MMD 2005: 7).
By the time research was conducted, the situation had changed: Membership had risen to over
70 % of the total beneficiaries (see table 7) and all the interviewed farmers (NB all of which
lived in the head-end commands) knew of the existence of the cooperative - whereas
knowledge about its actual tasks was still little.
Although no exact numbers were available, due to information from the CPB and committee
members, the missing 30% consist of those beneficiaries who live in the tail-end commands
and therefore did not have irrigation at the time of research. Thus, there had been a successive
process
of
recruiting
members from head to tail-
Table 5: Development of membership in the KIC
end corresponding to the
year
number of members
% of total irrigators
2004
852
12.2
finalization of infrastructure.
This
2007
3,886
55.5
2010
4,921
70.3
confirms
the
initial
assumption that the further
downstream the community,
the later it will be part of the
Source: MMD (2005)
cooperative and, accordingly,
its
inferiority
representation
early
during
phase
in
the
of
institutionalization regarding
rights and duties is more
likely.
Another point is that, as
mentioned above, the hydrological units do not coincide with the administrative ones. This
problem has already been identified by the implementing companies at the end of 2003:
"An analysis of the Kebele boundaries with respect to the proposed Irrigation Blocks
has established that only three blocks fall wholly within a single Kebele, with the rest
falling within two or three Kebeles [sic!]. This highlights the need for there to be a
system of canal operation which is independent of administrative/political boundaries."
(MMD 2003)
Actually, that should not be a problem in itself as it would be in other countries where villages
as administrative units play an enormous role in community organization. While this does not
seem to be applicable to the region with its dispersed settlements and the political history of
the kebele23, mixing up the boundaries of political and hydrological representation nevertheless
23
See also the forthcoming section
53
poses a question of equality. Thus, while the seven kebele within the scheme might be
represented equally by the number of elected representatives the twelve irrigation blocks i.e.
hydrological units are not. For example, Chihona does not have its own representative in the
Cooperative's board. According to the board members, "this is because Kudmi and Chihona
were one unit before", so now they are both represented by a board member from Kudmi.
Once irrigation is fully functional and management of the scheme will become more complex,
it is reasonable to assume that this distribution will lead to a problematic underrepresentation
of certain areas in the decision-making process. This could be particularly difficult for the
rather tail end units, which are located furthest away from the main road and therefore already
are spatially disadvantaged regarding public services, market access and the like.
7.3.3 "Beneficiaries" and "Non-Beneficiaries"
Another issue related to spatial equity is the distribution of benefits between those households
included in the project and those who are not. When asked about their point of view
concerning the irrigation project, farmers who lived in the vicinity of the command area stated
that they were disappointed to not have been included:
"First I thought maybe I get water on my land as well, but no: in the end it turns out to
be wrong. But my uncle has a field with irrigation so maybe sometime we can change
for one season.24
The access to irrigated land is limited to sharecropping and personal exchange due to the
tenure system that vests ownership of land in the state, Moreover, most beneficiaries are not
keen to change with non-irrigators since they also have separate fields outside the scheme
themselves. Concerning the project's effect on poverty alleviation it remains to be seen
whether small-scale farmers relying on rain-fed agriculture i.e. "non-beneficiaries" in the area
will suffer from falling food prices due to increased productivity of neighbouring peasants and
competition with higher-yielding irrigated farms as experiences with other regions do suggest
(cf. Eshetu et al. 2010).
7.4 Conclusion: Institutions in Irrigation and the Iteration of Influence
On top of the discrepancies and inequalities between different segments of the local
communities in how they benefit from irrigation, the process of decision making also
substantially reproduces social inequalities. Disregarding other definitions of social equity the
term will be used here as the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes
regardless of a person's position within the community. In the case of the cooperative such a
distributional fairness of power would be given if every member of the target population had
the same opportunity to make their voice heard within the institution.
24
Interview Inguti, March 13, 2010
54
In fact though, those who already possess power in the respective kebele, also fill the most
important positions within the irrigation cooperative. This is the case both for the board and
the Ketena or zonal committees. The mechanism of reproducing power is rather simple
according to both the leaders' perceptions why they were voted for and the members'
statements why they voted for someone. According to interviewees, the most important
characteristics a person had to have in order to be voted for were (in descending order of
importance) literacy, experience in dealing with government officials and the belief in their
capabilities to arrange for a just and equal management and distribution of water. The criterion
of literacy is reduces the number of possible candidates considerably, taking into account that
about 80% of the rural population in Amhara are illiterate.
It also makes the election of women into leadership positions even less likely considering the
differences between male and female literacy (see table 6). Those women participating in
meetings usually confirm their participation rather by fingerprint than by signature and during
research no women were or had been active in any position of the cooperative.
Total
Region
Amhara
Rural
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
24.8
34.1
16.0
19.7
29.2
10.3
Source:
Table 6: Shenkut
Literacy (2005)
of population aged over 10 in Amhara Region 2001
However, the argument that
formal education is needed to
fill
a
position
cooperative
within the
allowed
some
younger men who were eager
to get the job to fill a
leadership
position
on
the
zonal level. Some of them were
the sons of priests or elders but
others were appointed although
they did not have a socially or
economically
privileged
standing within the community
other than having attended school for 6 to 8 years. These "entrepreneurs" reported that their
leading position benefitted them in gaining knowledge needed for irrigation, which they
otherwise might not have been able to access. With this understanding, they do not only
achieve better results in farming; their greater knowledge, in turn, also consolidates their
authority within the organization.
55
Since basic literacy (also mathematical) is actually crucial to fulfil the tasks that come with the
official positions within the organization, the reproduction of power along already established
hierarchies makes perfect sense in a technocentric understanding of farmers' institutions. The
problem is rather that the needed basic skills cannot be acquired by most.
The second point of dealing with government officials especially applies to the higher
positions within the organization and narrows the potential candidates down to a small
proportion of politically active people. Being familiar with handling administrative affairs and
dealing with bureaucratic structures in the rural context usually comes along with working for
political parties or administration at the kebele level. Accordingly most of the board members
held such a position in the past or are still active in local party politics.
In this context it is important to understand that the administrative institution of the kebele or
peasant association was established by the Derg regime in 1975 as a political instrument
through which the regime "literally controlled every village and every human activity in the
vast rural areas of Ethiopia" (Aadland 2002: 36). The kebele also played an important role in
the prosecution of political enemies during the Red Terror campaigns. Although the leaders of
the kebele were replaced after the downfall of the Derg, the structures were not, and the new
ruling party could soon restore control through their own executives within the kebele
structures (Pausewang 2002: 98). Over time, this newly exerted control from above
increasingly resulted in a situation where the "kebele are once again monitored and run by
political cadres" (Aadland 2002: 36). Under these circumstances the appointment of kebele
administrators and active party members into leading positions of the cooperative should be
put into question.
However, it was very difficult to talk about this with the farmers. Answers were evasive or
even resulted in a tirade of praising the government. People's reluctance to openly speak about
such sensitive political matters is understandable, considering that the research was conducted
immediately before the general elections in May 2010. Both researchers (cf. Zewde &
Pausewang 2002) and NGOs like Human Rights Watch report intimidations, arrests and
violence against supporters of opposition parties related to elections and in the rural areas
"agricultural assistance and other resources are often used as leverage to punish and prevent
dissent, or to compel individuals into joining the ruling party" (Human Rights Watch 2010).
Since no valid data on this topic could be collected during research it should not be alleged that
any position in the cooperative had been filled through other but democratic means. However,
the composition of the cooperative's committees implies a political bias highly in favour of
more powerful actors within the communities.
56
VIII CONFLICTS BETWEEN
This chapter provides an overview of conflicts between actors, who are involved in politics of
water management on different scales or domains, according to Mollinga's topology. It covers
the disparities between what farmers and official's priorities in irrigation as well as the
difference between what is calculated to be an acceptable price for irrigation water as a result
of the "water as an economic good" paradigm and what farmers are willing or able to pay.
Furthermore, the conflict between religious institutions and the obligations of commercial
production will be discussed. The last section outlines the conflicting interests of different
ministries in the implementation of management transfer and the impact of this struggle on the
affected farmers.
57
8.1 Farmers' and Officials' Priorities of Problems
"WUAs are groups of farmers who use water, not just groups of water users."
Goldensohn (1994:11)
While water is not the end product of what farmers need to sustain their livelihood,
Goldensohn describes how engineers and bureaucrats implementing irrigation projects in a
whole series of case studies from different countries tend to overemphasize the need for
irrigation water. This same difference in setting priorities between officials and farmers can be
observed in a study conducted in 2008 which covered the entire Mecha woreda (cf. WSP
International 2008): While officials on the kebele level named water as the most pressing
problem, on the household level the number one priority was agricultural inputs (14.67 %),
whereas water came only on 7th position (6.34 %). The priorities set by farmers in Koga
coincide with this data:
Factors
Human
capacities
Farmers Officials Total
(%)25
(%)26
(%)27
Total
Aberration
Knowledge
57
72
59,5
2
15
Workload
75
18
46,5
3
-57
8
62
36,0
7
54
89
32
60,5
1
-57
62
23
42,5
5
-39
69
12
40,5
6
-57
Priority
Table 7 Farmers' and officials' priorities of problems
Socioeconomic
Markets
Lack of
ownership
Input
markets
Output
markets
Financial
markets
Technical
Land levelling
4
83
43,5
4
79
Organizational
Organizational
0
Structure/HR
30
15
8
30
The table above shows the
differences in the setting of
priorities between farmers and officials regarding what they perceive to be the most important
problems with irrigation farming.
25
Of total interviews
26
Of total interviews
27
Mean value
58
The category "officials" includes project staff from the PMU and KIDMO as well as
employees of those government agencies that have a stake in the Koga scheme, namely the
Ministry (MoWR) as well as the local Bureau of Water Resources (BoWR), the Bureau of
Agriculture and Rural Development (BoARD), the management committee, and the
Cooperative Promotion Bureau (CPB). The first column lists the mentioned problems while
the following two columns show how many percent of interviewees in the respective group
mentioned the problem. Problems have been ranked, according to the mean value of both
groups in the next column (Total). To show the differences between the two groups' priorities,
the last column depicts the discrepancy in frequencies of mentioning in percent.
8.1.1 Socio-Economic Factors
Knowledge: From Whom to Learn
Lack of knowledge is on the second place of importance in the ranking and has the smallest
aberration between farmers' and officials' perceptions of all mentioned points. Both are aware
of the problem or rather of the problems since "lack of knowledge" covers a rather broad range
of different issues:
-
Technical knowledge referring to irrigation farming (crop water needs, cropping patterns and
rotation, application of fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides)
Technical knowledge referring to maintenance and operation (how to dig and repair quaternary
and feeder canals, how to handle the tertiary infrastructure)
Managerial skills (literacy, knowledge of basic accounting, leadership).
These points are rather straightforward. The technique of irrigation is new to the farmers so
they need to learn how to handle it. This is why the project identified key persons (like priests
and elders) from each irrigation area who receive training on these topics and who are then
supposed to distribute their knowledge amongst the other farmers. It seems however, that the
distribution of the knowledge does not necessarily always work as it has been shown above.
Moreover, this has been started rather late; trainers did only start to work for the project in the
end of 2009, when irrigation was already functional in the first units.
During the trainings with future beneficiaries, farmers were asked to raise their hands if they
believed that irrigation also had negative side-effects. No hand went up.
Not anticipating side-effects such as water logging and salinity, an increased probability of
weeds and water-borne diseases like malaria at this late stage of the project implementation,
shows how poorly educated farmers still are when it comes to the issue of possible impacts of
irrigation. Another point, partly relating to lack of knowledge, is the disparity between the
proposed and the actually practiced cropping patterns as described in section 8.2.
Although the only means to support farmers in learning and thereby to overcome this lack
would be to employ enough support staff, financing is insufficient and the responsible project
unit KIDMO severely understaffed.
59
Ownership: "That's the Government's Job!"
Lack of ownership is one of the problems perceived as much more important by officials than
by farmers. The topic is very closely connected to the issue of participation. If farmers do not
perceive the project as "theirs" they are very unlikely to participate sufficiently to keep it
running and a higher participation of farmers in the planning process would have been likely to
create a higher sense of ownership. The perceived lack of ownership results in unsustainable or
even destructive handling of infrastructure like carelessness in maintaining canals or farmers
stealing metal from water distribution gates. Lack of ownership manifests itself also in the
unwillingness to take over time-consuming tasks without payment, which leads to a neglect of
one's duties. Examples are farmers arriving late or not showing up at all for scheduled
meetings, which in turns results in frustration amongst those who did come on time. In other
cases, irrigation infrastructure is deliberately destroyed and water withdrawn illegally.
As mentioned above, this situation may partly result from a lack of farmers' involvement in the
implementation process of the project, which has been criticized earlier (cf. Gebre, Getachew
& McCartney 2008). The protests against construction of infrastructure and the stealing of
building materials especially in
Table 8: Ownership of scheme as perceived by users
N = 31
* = represented by the irrigation cooperative
the initial implementing phase
can probably be attributed to
that
lack
of
participation.
However, the lack of effort
Responses
Percent
amongst
farmers
to
involved
in
decision-
making
the
structures
get
and
management of the scheme
Owned by the government
76
Owned by the community*
7
appears to have deeper reasons.
10
The very principle of farmers'
Owned by government and community
N.A.
6
self-management
seemed to
appear strange to many of the
beneficiaries who rather expect
the government to "take care of
things". It is not only the
officials' perception that there is a lack of ownership but in fact the majority of "average" users
(i.e. excluding those with a leading position within the Cooperative) understand the scheme as
government property (Table 8) and thus attribute responsibility for and care of its components
to it.
Other studies also describe farmers' "subordinate attitudes towards the state and state officials"
(Rahmato 2008: 184) and explain it as an outcome of tenure insecurity due to the government's interferences and control over households through land legislation to date. While it is
60
certainly true that the numerous and drastic state interventions with rural life in the past have
had a lasting impact on famers' attitudes towards the state, one should be cautious with the
term "subordinate". In the context of the case study, farmers' behaviour can be seen in the light
of "everyday resistance". Coined by Scott (1985), these concepts broaden the understanding of
peasant resistance from open rebellion to the "prosaic and constant struggle" (Scott 1986: 6)
that takes places between peasants and the elites on a daily basis.
One way of such covert resistance is to refuse to participate and to engage in development
initiatives - a situation that is recorded for many irrigation projects. For example Laube (2009),
in his study on a Ghanaian irrigation project, describes the exact same behaviour as it was
observed in the Koga project:
"Farmers do not attend meetings, the payment morale of small-scale farmers is rather
low, and cheating of the […] officials is a well accepted behaviour among the
peasants, especially when it helps them to avoid payments and assignments" (p. 9).
Therefore, the lack of ownership in the Koga as well as other irrigation projects can be
interpreted as a rejection of just another top-down intervention within peoples' lives, from
which not all of them benefit equally.
Workload: What Goes Short
The second most important problem according to the farmers is an increased workload due to
irrigation farming. 75% mentioned out of their own volition that both the increased hours per
day and the fact that they have to work the whole year round pose a problem for them. The
remaining 25% did identify the workload as a problem when asked.
This problem is especially severe for those who have leading positions within the Cooperative
since they have unpaid duties to fulfil such as conflict management, giving advice, supervision
of group or zonal members in addition to the increased work on the fields.
Associated problems reported were the physical strain and the forced neglect of other
activities, both social and economic.
For the social sphere farmers pointed out that they particularly miss out on networking
activities. Particularly women mentioned that this was a problem resulting from the new
farming techniques. Frequently mentioned was a lack of time to attend meetings of the
numerous and important religious associations, like idir, that serve as credit and saving groups,
psychological support and simple discussion rounds28. Especially the group and zonal leaders
reported this to be a problem since they had to pay a fine in case they did not show up or did
not show up in time to these meetings that often collide with irrigation duties.
28
For a detailed description of idir's functions and activities see Eguavoen & Tesfai (2011).
61
Reportedly, the time spent with relatives for ceremonies like funerals and child birth has been
reduced to only one day, as opposed to the time before the irrigation scheme, when the
families stayed together for two or three days.
Economic activities otherwise carried out during dry season included wage labour and petty
trade. Trade with eucalyptus trees was currently being reduced, since many of the plantations
got cut down; both to create space for field and to reduce the adverse effects on soils caused by
the tremendous water needs of the trees. Another activity was to offer transportation services,
mainly by donkey-drawn cart. Since this is no longer an option, farmers complained that they
were forced to sell some of their livestock - a problem aggravated by lack of grazing land and
need for capital, which will be explained below.
The trade-off between cash income and subsistence is a difficult situation, in particular for the
poorer households. It either results in a lack of workforce for farming or in inadequate
household income before selling the harvest.
Input Market: The Hunger for Seeds
The most pressing problem, as derived from the mean value of both farmers' and officials'
perceptions, is the weak input market (60.5%). However, comparing the priorities between the
two groups, a high aberration in percentages is evident, i.e. farmers perceived this problem to
be much more severe than officials. Farmers repeatedly mentioned the lack of input supplies in
general and the lack of those at an affordable price specifically. Ranked highest on their list of
needed inputs were improved seeds. They specifically complained about the lack of supply
with high yielding varieties (HYV) of maize, which were reported by farmers to go beyond
their ability to pay (costs were about 60 Birr/kg at the time of research) - if available at all.
This undersupply is by no means specific to Koga but rather a national problem, rooted in the
Ethiopian production and distribution system.
The state-owned Ethiopian Seed Enterprise is "the lynchpin of Ethiopia's seed industry"
(Alemu et al. 2008: 307), in charge of the multiplication and delivery of improved seeds for all
main crops, especially cereals. ESE's produce is distributed to regional and woreda-level
offices of the MoARD for further allocation to the peasants. However, since the production
season 2003/2004, the distribution of inputs (including seeds) is channelled through
cooperatives and their apex structures as well (ibid). What specifically worries farmers is that
none of the other local agricultural service cooperatives really serves to the particular input
needs of irrigation farmers. The Merawi based service cooperative actually often distributes
non-agricultural inputs like cheap sugar instead of seeds.
Therefore farmers expect the KIC to focus on irrigation-specific farming supplies.
The lack of input also aggravates other problems reported by farmers, such as crop pests (that
especially affect the vegetables which farmers are expected to grow with the onset of
62
irrigation). The high prices for inputs are an even greater problem in connection with the weak
output market that will be discussed in the following.
Output Market: Of Middlemen and Marketing
Many farmers from Kudmi and Chihona complained about the unsatisfactory opportunities to
sell their crops on the local markets (62%), while respondents from yet to be irrigated areas
mentioned this point as a major expected problem. The priority of this problem significantly
increased with growing distance of interviewees' residences from all-weather roads and local
market centres. Given that small-scale farmers have no access to larger markets due to a lack
of transport, they are often reliant on middlemen, for both in- and outputs and repeatedly
voiced this to be a problem. As a result output prices according to farmers are considerably
low. This obviously becomes an even more severe problem when input prices are high relative
to the low output prices since this minimizes the farmers' profit margin. A study by RiPPLE on
the agricultural market chain in Ethiopia reveals that low and unpredictable prices farmers get
from middlemen are "rooted in the power imbalance between the producers […] and the
assemblers who buy from them. Because there are so few assemblers operating at such a local
level and buying directly from small farmers, they are able to fix prices." (Eshetu et al. 2010:
viii). These assemblers are usually farmers themselves but on a larger scale than the average
farmer. After collecting grain from a large number of peasants they usually transport it to the
next local market by horse or donkey-drawn carts. One possibility farmers mentioned to avoid
this situation, is to store the produce in order to either sell a higher quantity or to sell it at time
when the offered prices are better. This is one reason why farmers are reluctant to change their
production to vegetables as these are perishable and not suitable for storage. However, this
change would be an important step towards diversification, since an excess supply of the same
products on the local markets also keeps the prices low.
The problem of marketing has been identified by officials as well and is attempted to be solved
by supporting the cooperative in its efforts. According to its chairman, the Irrigation
Cooperative's board is working on better marketing for members by identifying potential bulk
purchasers and trying to get connected with apex organisations such as cooperative unions.
Achieving this institutionalization in marketing would be an important step. One reason, why
grain traders are reluctant to trade with small-scale farmers directly, is that the traders "have
very limited recourse to legal means for enforcing contracts. Thus, they trade only with
partners whom they know well and trust in order to avoid the high costs of payment
delinquency or reneging on the terms of the contract" (Gabre-Madhin 2001: 2).
Establishing a reliable institution would enable the members of the cooperative to participate
in the market more directly and for that reason with lower transaction costs. However, given
the current output market situation, it will still be a long way to make the shift to more
valuable products like vegetables worthwhile for farmers (cf. Inocencio et al. 2007).
63
Financial Market: Cattle for Credit
Another related problem is the insufficient development of financial markets in the region.
69% of the interviewed farmers mentioned the lack of credit services as an obstacle for them to
sustain their livelihoods. Many farmers claim that they first have to invest into inputs before
they can start to irrigate properly, which they cannot afford without access to credit. Both
farmers and officials said that the little available credit services in Merawi have such high
interest rates (reportedly around 20%) that farmers are barely able to repay the loans, even if
they manage to get one. To obtain capital, many farmers reported that they had to sell some of
their cattle. The significance of livestock and especially cattle in Ethiopia and the whole of
East Africa must not be underestimated. Despite the social prestige gained by owning
livestock, especially oxen, and their importance as draught power, the selling of such assets is
a risky undertaking from a farmer's perspective - given that livestock is the most common and
important form of asset accumulation for rural households. They function as a vital safeguard
against disasters, including crop failure:
"How shall I buy better seeds if I don't have money? I sell my cows and what do I do
when the harvest is bad? Then I have no more cows - not for milk and meat not for
sale, either."29
8.1.2 Technical and Organizational Factors
Land levelling: How to dig canals uphill
A major technical problem only mentioned by officials, although clearly a severe problem for
the affected farmers as well, is land levelling. This means that in several places of the
command area, where water needs to flow downhill the landscape is actually sloping upwards.
According to the interviewed technical staff this problem only exists for quaternary canals, i.e.
those canals that have to be built by farmers. Some 150 ha have already been lost according to
project staff since the problem could not be overcome without professional and costly
machinery, so the concerned fields could ultimately not be irrigated. The affected farmers are
rather upset about this, having counted on the opportunity to start irrigation in the near future.
Lack of Staff: One to Help Thousands
The project does not even remotely have enough staff to support all the farmers in the project
area. At the time of research, the KIDMO team consisted of only five experts, who could
29
Interview Kudmi, February 27 2010
64
obviously not care for the capacity building of some 14,000 households. The team, who is
trying to help the farmers, is constantly overstrained, as one KIDMO member explained:
"The project is new and we are the only officials here, but there is no additional staff
or resources and we do not have the ability to advice all the beneficiaries with the
number of staff we have."
And another one points out:
"We don't have sufficient human resources. The project document says there should be
experts on site level. These experts should be affiliated with the Agricultural Bureau
but there is no coordination yet. The documents also say there must be one
Development Agent per 50 ha but there is more than 200ha per DA."
This might even be an understatement. Only two out of all interviewed farmers said that they
had access to extension services besides the trainings received from project staff.
This lack of capacities among the KIDMO team has explicitly been voiced in project
documents published in June 2010, after research for this study had been completed.
"The newly appointed team of the agricultural wing of KIDMO are doing activities
related to some farm activities, but we are not sure whether they can effectively
manage the command areas now ready for next dry season irrigation" (WWDSE
2010).
Seen in the light of other issues like the aforementioned lack of knowledge, lack of
participation and the resultant lack of ownership, capacity building is a key problem. None of
these issues can be resolved without adequate funding for staff to work on them together with
the farmers.
8.2
Money for Water? Self-Financing and Cost Recovery
It has been outlined above, that the concept of water as an economic good has been the most
controversial among the principles of IRWM. Here, only the mechanism of cost recovery will
be discussed; even more contested forms such as the privatization of drinking water and water
exports cannot be dealt with as they do not apply to the case study. Nevertheless, it should be
kept in mind that the treatment of water as a commodity is associated with a whole "set of
linked transformations related to prices, property rights, and the boundary between the public
and private spheres" (Conca 2006: 216)30.
30 The opposition to the economic treatment of water is strong, with the protests in Cochabamba,
Bolivia, being the most famous but by far not the only ones. For a detailed discussion see Conca (2006:
215 - 256), Barlow & Clarke (2003). The approach as a whole is often argued to contradict recent
developments regarding the right to water: In July 2010, the UN General Assembly formally
acknowledged the "right to water" (Ref.A/64/L.63/Rev.1). In September the UN Human Rights
Council adopted a resolution recognizing that the human right to water and sanitation are a part of the
right to an adequate standard of living.
65
As described above, the logic behind the pricing of water in irrigation is that it will lead to a
more efficient and sustainable use of the resource. Then, the question is whether making
farmers pay does not miss the point considering that "major gains in irrigation efficiency
particularly in large systems, do not occur necessarily at the farm level where the pricing
argument would work, but at the main supply level" (Lamoree & van Steenbergen 2006: 104)"
Nevertheless, the pricing of water for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of the infrastructure
has been outlined by the Ministry of Water Resources in its Water Sector Strategy:
"Capital costs of water projects for the poor communities are borne by the government,
provided the communities pay for the O&M of the water schemes" (MoWR 2001).
Accordingly, the Appraisal Report (2001) states that "most of the operation and maintenance
costs of the irrigation system will be recovered from the beneficiaries" to ensure the
sustainability of the project. However, the Cost Recovery Study, undertaken by Desta Horecha
Water
Fig. 12:
Supply
to
Engineering
Principles of cost recovery
Service
determine
how
(GWP 2000: 20)
financing by the farmers can be
achieved, concludes that at
least parts of the capital costs
can be recovered as well.
According to the study, "the
recommended level of cost
recovery by irrigation water
Fig. 13: Proportions of produce in the proposed farming models
users
on
average
2,203/ha/year"
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
is
Birr
(DHWSES
Model A
2008: 209). Of this, 557.14
Model B
ETB would be used for O&M
Model C
costs
and
1,645.86
for
the
part
remaining
of
the
investment costs and interests.
Together this amount could
cover 39% of the full supply
costs as stated by the study.
Source: DHWSES (2008)
The different principles of cost
recovery,
according to the
GWP, are depicted in figure
66
12. The calculations are based on two assumptions:
Firstly, three different values for annual economic rents i.e. household surpluses were
estimated according to three farming models 31 proposed by the consultant (see Fig. 13), which
farmers are supposed to adopt.
Secondly, the study employs three different approaches to estimate how much of the farmers'
income can be taken for cost recovery: their ability to pay (with the two options of either one
third, or one fourth of household surpluses) and their willingness to pay (which according to
the study was stated by farmers to be 10% of their net income on average). There is an
apparent discrepancy between the amount calculated by the consultant and the amount farmers
said they would agree to pay even in the proposed High Value Crops Model C. The difference
increases gradually from the technology- and knowledge-intensive farming models to the
current situation: the proposed amount adds up to 815% of what farmers are willing to pay,
taking the actual income in 2007 as a basis of calculation (see Table 9).
Table 9: Proposed cost recovery in relation to estimated income
Source: Desta Horecha (2008)
Proposed Irrigated Farming
Water charge per ha in ETB
Rain fed system
Approach I:
based on ability to pay
(1/3 of economic rent)
Approach II:
based on ability to pay
(25% of economic rent)
Approach III:
based on willingness to pay
(10% of net income)
Difference in % between
willingness to pay and proposed
cost recovery of 2203 ETB
Model A
(conservative)
Model B
(moderate)
Model C
(high value)
792
2938
3097
2465
594
*2203
2323
2968
270
995
1054
1379
815
221
209
160
*=actually proposed cost recovery
Thus, with the current state of knowledge and access to inputs as described above it is very
unlikely that the proposed cost recovery can be implemented without resistance by farmers. In
31
Model A: supposed to be practiced immediately,
cropping pattern of 40% maize, 16% barley or wheat, 16% potatoes, 10% onions, 8%
vegetables and 10% perennials, beans and pulses intercropped
Model B: can be realized when farmers are more experiences and HYV seeds are available,
cropping pattern of 30% maize, 20% barley or wheat, 20% potatoes, 10% onions, 10%
vegetables, 10% perennials, beans and pulses intercropped
Model C: can take years until it is feasible,
cropping pattern of 30% wheat, 20% potatoes, 20% onions, 10 % tomatoes, 10%
perennials (animal forage intercropped with coffee)
(Source: Desta Horecha 2008)
67
interviews, many farmers stated that they would neither be willing nor able to pay for water at
all. This was especially the case in female-headed households as well as poorer households
who did not own oxen, which again raises the question of equity. Project staff voiced serious
doubt themselves about the feasibility of the planned cost recovery and it remains to be seen
when and to what extent payments can be expected.
In its final report, the WCD states that dams "designed to deliver irrigation services have
typically fallen short of physical targets, did not recover their costs and have been less
profitable in economic terms than expected" (WCD 2000: 68).
8.3
Priests and the Profanity of Commercial Production
The Orthodox Church plays a major role in both people's everyday lives and local politics,
which also has an influence on the process of implementing irrigation. One problem that led to
conflicts within the community was related to the reallocation of land: the clerics reported
conflicts with farmers whose fields are situated on land that had been allocated to passageways
by the project's land redistribution scheme. Since these farmers were unwilling to give away
land and still plough and farm the to-be roads, others have to cover far distances to reach the
churches. However, the most controversial issue was and still is the conflict between norms,
values and rules regarding religion on one hand and those regarding irrigation on the other.
As mentioned above, problems did already come up during the construction process since the
Chinese workers did not respect religious holidays. Naturally, there was even greater
resistance when it became apparent that with irrigation there would be a need for local farmers
as well to work on such occasions.
The former leader of St. Georgis church in Kudmi (which according to interviewees is the
largest church in the area hosting 65 priests and 7 religious teachers) reported that he himself
as well as fellow priests were concerned from the beginning that irrigation would lead to
violations of religious holidays. Apparently the implementing agencies have been aware of this
conflict potential beforehand, as the Appraisal Report states that:
"Religious and cultural holidays may take up to 150 days in a year. Efficient use of the
irrigation component will require dispensation to allow irrigation to take place
throughout the season. The project will work with local religious leaders and elders on
this issue as this approach has worked elsewhere in Ethiopia (AfDB 2001: 9)."
For that reason, some chosen representatives were invited to visit irrigation schemes in other
parts of the country so they could see the benefits for themselves and then propagate the
advantages to their respective communities. Reportedly, they were convinced of the economic
benefits of double cropping and the interviewed priests stated that they had learned a lot on
how to handle irrigation for his personal advantage. However, the priests, who are farmers
themselves, are in the difficult position to stick to religious rules on the one hand and still
irrigate their fields on the other hand. The problem is approached with a very practical
68
solution: on holidays the fields are being irrigated by their children, to spare the priests from
violating the religious rules themselves. According to interviewees, only on Sundays and the
more important saint days like Saint Mariam, nobody is working the fields. According to
interviewees, only on Sundays and the more important saint days like Saint Mariam nobody is
working the fields. On request of the clerics it has been arranged with other farmers and with
the Cooperative's Board, i.e. the management committee, for these days not to be violated by
anyone. But, one of the priests criticizes that"the officials above the board do not respect the
agreement and still advise people to work every day."32
So, while grassroots compromises are being challenged by "higher level" actors, people
continue negotiating to conciliate their day-to-day obligations, as they have to comply at least
with the water allocation plans, i.e. taking your turn in watering the fields according to your
time slot. To legitimize "holiday irrigation" the religious classification of acceptable holiday
activities is being broadened: watering the fields is now being labelled as "minor work" by
some priests which makes it less of a violation "comparable to cooking and other women's
activities"33 while hard physical work like ploughing is still strictly forbidden on all holidays.
The practical approach to deal with both religious and irrigation duties is met by contradictory
opinions by those priests, who are still waiting for the completion of canal structures to start
irrigating and those who do not own land within the irrigation scheme. Not yet confronted with
the necessities of the new farming methods, some claim that everyone who neglects their
religious duties for irrigation "will rot in hell"34.
This comparison of opinions clearly shows the changes in and coexistence of institutions
brought about by irrigation as well as the lack of knowledge about what to practically expect
from irrigation farming.
Still, there were quite some farmers who did water their fields on Sundays. Many of these were
rather young and many already cultivated vegetables. When asked about their activities, they
usually referred to those priests who used the new classification as minor work. So the more
proactive farmers engaged in what one could call a "religious forum shopping".
8.4
Cooperative or Association? Bureaucratic Tugs-of-War
Irrigation management transfer is increasingly promoted as a tool to manage demand in IWRM
to both reduce costs and increase participation. In line with more general structural adjustment
programmes starting in the 1980s, irrigation management transfer as one form of privatization
has been supported by many of the major international development banks (FAO 2001, cf. EDI
32
Interview with former leader of St. Georgis church, March 27, 2010
33
Ibid
34
Interview with priest in Merawi, March 20, 2010.
69
1996). However, the form that management transfer can take varies greatly from scheme to
scheme.
While by its design the Koga project was envisaged to be the first large scale irrigation scheme
to be managed by the farmers themselves, during the implementation phase there were already
some inconsistencies concerning what parts of the scheme the farmers were actually going to
manage themselves and which should remain the responsibility of the government.
The Appraisal Report from AfDB stated that:
"Operation and maintenance of the project will be carried out at two levels. The large irrigation
infrastructure such as dams, main and secondary canal and associated road network will be
operated and maintained by the Project Operation Unit, to be established at Merawi [...]. The
WUAs will undertake operation of the maintenance of the tertiary and quaternary canals,
associated access roads and on-farm structures, after receiving training [...]" (AfDB 2001:20).
However, plans seem to have changed later on. According to project documents, the CPB next
planned for the entire management of the irrigation scheme to be taken over by the
beneficiaries, thereby contradicting the MoWR's intentions (MMD 2005).
After the confusion about farmers' scope of responsibilities during the implementation phase it
now seems settled that the scheme will be jointly operated and managed, i.e. the tasks the
farmers' organization is supposed to fulfil will be according to the description in the Appraisal
Report:
"With guidance of the PMU, the WUAs will carry out the preparation of guidelines for
scheme operation and maintenance and ensure that members follow instructions,
determine rights and obligations of members and establish and enforce efficient water
distribution procedures in a fair and equitable manner. In addition, the WUAs will take
part in the resolution of disputes, fixing water charges and arranging for collection.
They will organize members for efficient procurement of inputs, credit and other
support services." (ibid)
Most of these tasks are not yet carried out by the existing farmers' organization since these are
still in the process of organising members into groups, adopting by-laws etc.
Strictly speaking, there actually is no institution such as a WUA in Koga at all thus far. The
terms Irrigation Cooperative or Water User Association are mostly used interchangeably by
both farmers and officials. Other researchers in the area have faced the same conceptual
confusion, and discussions with scientists working in Southern Ethiopia revealed similar
problems of institutional definition:
"According to the experts from SWIHSA and also to some from ARDO, no institution
like the WUA formally exists. However, farmers mention them in group discussions
and in the structured interviews they claim to be a member of it" (Leidreiter 2010: 63).
To clarify some of this mix-up, one has to be aware of the legal situation of farmers'
organisations in Ethiopia and the functional differences between them. The legal non-existence
of WUAs is due to the fact that in Ethiopia the term usually refers to groups of farmers who
organize themselves for small-scale irrigation without official registration. These groups are
70
focusing solely on water distribution, management and operation of the infrastructure, but are
"sometimes threatened by parallel established government-supported cooperatives, which have
broader operational scopes and have stronger links with government institutions"
(Haileselassie 2008: 35). While a WUA therefore is a rather informal institution, there is a
fixed legal framework for cooperatives. In Ethiopia the current legislation is set in the
"Cooperative Societies Proclamation No. 147/1998" (GoE 1998).
Together with the emergence of the "participatory-approach" in development discourse, the
allegedly farmer-driven institution of WUAs became more and more popular within donor
circles, thus development policies for farmers' organizations with regards to irrigation started
to change The World Bank states that "water users in Ethiopia have so far been mostly
organized into legally recognized Water Users Cooperatives, in accordance with the
Cooperatives Act and with the assistance from the Ministry of Cooperative Promotion.
However, under the project, Water Users Groups are understood to include both Water Users
Associations and Water Users Cooperatives. The project will sensitize communities on WUAs
and encourage the formation of these in view of the comparative advantages as demonstrated
in other countries, and in view of the nonprofit nature of O&M" (World Bank 2007: 61).
Within the scope of the project mentioned above, namely the Ethiopian Nile Irrigation and
Drainage Project, the World Bank financed a draft proclamation for the establishment of
WUAs as well as a draft preparation for by-laws and contract agreements, produced by the
French consultant firm BRL Ingénierie (BRLI) "to assist the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) in
the definition and adoption of the legal framework for the establishment of Agricultural Water
Users Associations for the sustainable development and management of irrigation and drainage
infrastructure" (BRLI 2009: 1).
These documents were published in October 2009 and during informal interviews members of
the MoWR voiced confidence that parliament would pass the necessary legislations within the
following year. Accordingly, during fieldwork a member of the MoWR joined the trainings for
farmers, with the clear mission to establish the term and the principles of WUAs in Koga while the actual in situ institution is a cooperative. This cooperative had been established by
the Cooperative Promotion Bureau (CPB) in cooperation with Development Agents of the
BoARD - which has also been the former employer of the facilitators conducting training with
the farmers. Unsurprisingly, this visit increased the level of confusion amongst farmers and
officials. Both the staff of the CPB and the project's capacity building wing had great
difficulties explaining the legal status of the Koga Irrigation Cooperative in relation to a
possible future WUA. Besides the increased terminological confusion in trainings and
interviews, it caused quite some reluctance among the trainers to accept the new concepts - and
to accept the fact that an outsider tried to interfere within their field of responsibility.
"Before last year we only know one thing - that was cooperative, Water User
Cooperative, we don't know anything about associations. But then this year a
representative of the Ministry [of Water Resources] told us that WUA is the right thing
71
for full management of the structures, he said to us. We got orally informed about that,
informally. But still now we didn't agree to that Association. We only know Water User
Cooperative which is already established and legalized. This is why the experts at
Woreda level [at the Cooperative Promotion Bureau] tell you that there is no
Association. They are right. And soon there will be a decision: Which one is best to
manage the structures." 35
The other side states a similar conflict:
"The Agency for Cooperative Promotion of the Amhara National Regional State has
initiated the formation of the Koga Irrigation Cooperative. This is quite substantial.
But, the articles referenced from the proclamation pertaining to the establishment of
cooperatives are not in most cases suitable for the establishment of an irrigation
management organization, namely an IWUA. This has been contentious between the
Consultant on behalf of the Client [i.e. the MoWR] and the Agency and has been
viewed by the latter as an encroachment into what is considered by them as justifiably
the Agency's sphere of activity."36
Thus, in fact this confusion is not only a question of terminology but also a question of
political power and responsibilities.
While the text of the proclamation is kept close to the one for cooperatives so that newly
established WUAs might actually resemble irrigation cooperatives in many structural points,
the changes for Irrigation Cooperatives already in place will probably be more far-reaching.
Part Eleven, Article 56/1 of the draft proclamation stipulates the following procedures for
already existing Irrigation Cooperatives and other "existing legal entities established to
collectively operate and maintain canal networks:
a) re-register as Associations pursuant to this Proclamation
b) support the establishment of associations to take responsibility for the relevant canal
network".
For the Koga case, that would mean that the existing Irrigation Cooperative could either
become a WUA itself or remain to be a cooperative but losing the control over the irrigation
infrastructure and its management by shifting this to the newly established association.
Furthermore, the Proclamation states that if the Management Committee of the Cooperative
"fails to transfer its rights and interests in a canal network to an Association the members will
have to pay a fine."
Going back to the initial reason for establishing WUAs in the first place, it remains
questionable whether WUAs in general do provide "comparative advantages" as stated in the
WB paper, especially as long as they are not legally recognized. Another question is whether
these "advantages as demonstrated in other countries" can be transferred from those countries
into the Ethiopian context. Generally none of the two types of organizations can be said to
35
KIDMO trainer, Interview March 2010
36
Inofficial Working Paper "Irrigation Water Users' Association: Concept and Concern" written by
Training Officer of MoWR
72
work better without looking at the local context. As the term WUA is often used when farmers
organize themselves for the handling of an irrigation scheme, the term carries the connotation
of bottom-up processes. In the Koga case however, a yet to be established WUA would be no
more "farmer-driven" than the already existing cooperative. The formation of a WUA would
be every bit as much an intervention from above, so that the argument of participation does not
apply here.
However, interviewed officials stated the most important technical argument in favour of a
WUA is that a single-purpose institution is more likely to enable the management, operation
and maintenance of the irrigation structures. In a farmer-managed scheme like Koga, a WUA
would hence be preferable, since it would enable beneficiaries to take care of the infrastructure
themselves - without being distracted by supplying other services like inputs or credit.
Considering the lack of knowledge and managerial capacities among the farmers, this
argumentation certainly has a point, but it is one mainly concerned with efficiency.
In contrast to that, farmers repeatedly voiced that the cooperative should also supply them with
other services like agricultural inputs or credit. Therefore, indirectly farmers opt for a
multipurpose cooperative rather than an institution that is concerned with water management
alone. This has already been pointed out in the key document concerned with WUAs in Koga:
"[...] it has been stated that the farmers requested a cooperative following consultations
with Woreda and Kebele administration. However, it is doubtful that the request has
come with any real knowledge of the duties and responsibilities of the proposed
cooperative or with any real knowledge of or understanding why there is a need for
Water Users' Associations" (MMD 2005: 7).
Here, the "professional hegemony" of technocratic view of resource management becomes
quite obvious: farmers' preferences are assumed to stem from a lack of knowledge about the
institutional structures. This implicitly expresses the understanding that the farmers' request is
based on their ignorance and not on an expertise in what they need to improve their
livelihoods.
It should be considered, that farmers actually do have quite a lot of experience with
cooperatives stemming from the time of the Derg, albeit mainly bad ones. If they opt for a
cooperative despite their suspicions towards this form of organization, it should be a clear sign
that they urgently need the services a cooperative could supply.
Whatever the name and institutional set-up will be in the end, the struggles overshadow the
political implications of Ethiopian farmers' organizations in general. Neither is their
functioning as tools for state control and political repression - not only in the past but to this
day - addressed at all, nor is it brought in connection to the unequal distribution of political
power in the existing organization's hierarchy.
73
8.5
Conclusion: Professional Panacea and Weapons of the Weak
"We might look as if we trust them but just because we have no choice but to 'believe'
them doesn't mean we don't have our own beliefs."
Lash, Szerszynski & Wynne (1996: 66)
The quotation above illustrates how farmers handle a situation in which "professionals"
intervene with their mode of production, their institutions, and their lives. In many cases, they
actually have to rely on what the professionals tell them, for instance: what crops require how
much water, when to take that water, with whom to cooperate for the withdrawal of water and
what crops realize the best prices on the market. The farmers "have no choice but to believe" in
that technical knowledge, since they lack the practical experience with irrigation farming. But,
their own beliefs and their own knowledge co-exist with that technical expertise and these two
sources of knowledge often contradict each other.
As a result, farmers' behaviour is often labelled as "conservative", when it does not comply
with the techniques proposed by professionals. Most of the officials in the Koga case neglected
the rationality of such behaviour and its risk-decreasing function as well. 37. In many cases,
officials were annoyed with farmers, listening to the advice, turning around and doing the
same thing as before. But for farmers this was hardly a matter of ignorance:
"When I get good advice, I listen closely. But what they tell me, it is like gambling.
Maybe it works - if it works, I will have a lot to sell. But if it doesn't work, I will have
nothing and my family will starve. So I rather have only a little."38
A change in the sorts of cultivated produce from perennial crops to vegetables carries the
increased danger of crop failure with it. The reason for such increased risk ultimately lies in
unreliable markets. According to farmers, the risk is due to pests, which are hard to combat
without agricultural inputs, and in the combination of lacking storage facilities and marketing
opportunities. Their repeated plea for input supply and marketing services underlines the fact
that water provision alone does not suffice to provide local food security. These factors have
long since been identified to be of the utmost importance in irrigation:
"Poor agricultural pricing policies, ineffective marketing facilities, high transport
costs, or the unavailability of required agricultural materials may make irrigation an
inappropriate investment, either for the state or the individual farmer or both"
(Steinberg 1983: 38).
In the field of state and development interventions, the "hegemony of scientific expertise"
(Peet, Robbins & Watts 2010: 40) often contradicts or neglects local knowledge in the
37
For the first academic discussion of the logic behind smallholders' risk averse behavior, see Chayanov
(1986)
38
Interview Inamirt, March 20, 2010
74
management of resources. One explanation for this is the tendency to apply the narrow view of
one`s professional discipline or field to any given situation. This results in a typical perception
of problems and provision of solutions, a phenomenon that Chambers (1988) calls "normal
professionalism":
"Normal professionalism is the thinking, values, methods and behaviour dominant in a
profession. Reproduced through education and training and sustained by hierarchy and
rewards, it tends to specialised narrowness" (Chambers, 1988: 68).
As discussed above, the resistance by farmers tends to be rather covert, when they feel
patronized by too narrow professional panacea. The overview by Chambers, that categorizes
the "normal" problems and solutions produced by the different disciplines involved in
irrigation management (see Fig. 14), shows how closely these correspond to the problems as
they were perceived by officials involved in the Koga project. The analysis showed that
despite the integrated concept of IWRM, its implementation is de facto characterized by
fragmentation, which can partly be explained by the diverging views of different professions.
As a result, water is treated as a separate sector instead of being perceived as an overarching
issue. In the case of ministries, this divide was mainly evident between the agricultural sector
and the water sector, both trying to expand or maintain their scope of responsibility. On the
street-level, the implementing actors from both ministries rejected the changes from above,
already overstressed with the exiting tasks. In most of the observed cases, they simply ignored
new internal ministerial policies or changed the commonly used terms while sticking to the
same routines as before39.
Fig. 14: Normal Professionalism
Source: Chambers (1988: 84), taken from Mollinga (2008b: 6)
According to the table above, social scientists tend to identify inequity and conflicts over water
"below the outlet" as the most important problems in irrigation schemes. This is in parts also
true for the study at hand, but a range of other aspects has been included as well. Certainly, the
conflicts that were identified as problematic were not only those below the outlet. A whole
39
This is a common phenomenon to reduce the complexity in street-level bureaucracy (cf. Lipsky 1980).
75
range of conflicts and inequalities, that had developed or had been reinforced as a result of
irrigation, have been identified.
IX
CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
The analytical approaches of political ecology combined with the sociology of water resources
management have provided a useful framework to identify actors, their respective interests and
contestation of irrigation politics between them. Moreover, such a multiscalar analysis reveals
how discourses on the character of water resources management in general and irrigation in
particular travel between the political scales. New policies and paradigms that are produced as
an effect of changing discourses have concrete impacts on power relations between political
actors.
The case study showed that global paradigms of how irrigation water is supposedly managed
best, manifest themselves on a local level through the intervention of the state. The "WUAdiscourse" is a good example. Emerging from global policies, the term and its institutional
implications have been incorporated into the requirements for international loans and thus into
national policies for sector reform plans. While continuously contested between different state
agencies, the concept found its way down to street-level bureaucrats, who now had to deal with
contradictory models of implementation which needed to be communicated to the farmers. The
fact that farmers' preferences were in opposition to the proposed concept was shrugged off as
ignorance by those higher level actors in favour of it and embraced by those who suspected
interference within their field of responsibility. Rooted in the contradiction between being
pushed to change farming practices for commercial production and the fact that the necessary
inputs for this were not available, the underlying reasons for farmers' behaviour went
unnoticed in the debate.
A closer look at the interlinkages between the different political domains reveals that while
global politics and institutions constrain the agency of the state by imposing certain policies on
it, they also enable government actors to cherry-pick from available discourses. This is true for
both climate change politics and the IWRM paradigm.
Climate change legitimizes infrastructure development in the face of transboundary
hydropolitics. The Ethiopian government can extend its scope of agency with reference to the
rather new issue of climate change and the surrounding policies like the NAPAs, while
actually addressing a situation of climate variability that has been a severe national problem
for a long time. However, while the implementation of irrigation projects like the one in Koga
might decrease the probability of disastrous water-related events, it does not necessarily lead to
a decreased vulnerability to floods and droughts on the local level. Current disaster research
points out that marginal groups are more vulnerable to disruptions, while elites, both local and
national, might even be able to strengthen their position. Thus, any means taken to mitigate
76
possible impacts of climate change and resultant extreme events, have to effectively include
those most vulnerable groups. The case study showed, that the more powerful actors within the
communities could consolidate their power through the process of introducing irrigation, while
marginalized segments of the community, including women and the very poor, were being left
out of the decision making process.
Such marginalization is not reduced by IWRM and the inherent participatory approach,
precisely because of its immense conceptual flexibility and inclusiveness. The analysis shows
that global fora, which advance the design of water policies, are dominated by the richest
countries, development agencies as well as the water industry. Countries with much less
financial and professional resources like Ethiopia are urged to adopt and incorporate
paradigms and policies that are too expensive and complex for them to implement. As a result,
only those elements that promise financial advantages for the state, such as cost recovery and
the institutionalizing of WUAs, reach the local level. Other elements such as enhancing the
role of women in irrigation or ecological sustainability are more complex and expensive to
achieve. Lip service in form of project design is paid to these elements, but they get lost on the
way to implementation. This is one interpretation. Another one would be a lack of political
will to strive for actual participation, because this would mean to reduce one's own control and
authority, which can comfortably be concealed with the arguments of complexity and costs.
Whatever the reason, such cherry-picking undermines the idea of integration in IWRM and
rather leads to a segmented implementation.
The last question the study tried to answer was how these impacts are dealt with in the process
of local adaptation to irrigation farming. Besides the fact, that state intervention for irrigation
had increased local inequalities to a certain degree, it was nevertheless essential to consider
more recent developments in political ecology, which focused rather on agency than on
structures. This allowed for a more differentiated insight into the institutional process, which
confirmed that adaptation is not merely reactive behaviour to policies, but rather a proactive
handling of a new situation. This is clearly demonstrated by the rising numbers of younger
leaders in the cooperative (who could gain a position within the organization due to their
commitment rather than because of an established authority within the community), in the
cases of successful relocation and in the "creative" dealing with the contradiction between
religious and farming duties. Other aspects of this agency are the resistance of farmers to
implementation processes and rules restricting their actions, as well as the negotiations of
power relations in open conflicts. The fact that struggles relating to a change of power
relations are rather openly carried out than in the case of reproducing power relations, comply
with Scott's concept of everyday resistance.
However, Scott himself points out that the weapons of the weak "are unlikely to do more than
marginally affect the various forms of exploitation that peasants confront" (p. 6). So despite all
arguments of agency, with structural inequity unaltered and reinforced through institutions in
77
irrigation, marginalization of certain groups will consequently prevail. In its Framework for
Action (2000), the GWP suggests a possible solution would be for "government and other
agency staff to voluntarily reduce their own power and involve communities in the decisionmaking process from the beginning" (see also Conca 2006: 162). As long as promising
approaches to involve all stakeholders in IWRM are degenerated to canting empty and
depoliticized rhetoric, no actual participation will result from it.
78
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88
XI
ANNEX: DATA COLLECTION SHEET
Contact details of respondents, date and content of data have been erased.
For further information, please contact the author.
Type of data
collection
Format
FGD 1
FGD
protocol, mp3
FGD 2
FGD 3
FGD 4
FGD
FGD
FGD
protocol, mp3
protocol, mp3
protocol, mp3
Code
Source of information
No. of
interviewees
Focus Group
Discussions
members of
cooperative`s board
farmers, Kudmi
farmers, Inguti
trainers (KIDMO)
6
5
3
1
Interviews with
farmers
INT 1
Interview
INT 2
Interview
translated
transcription,
mp3
mp3, summary
INT 3
Interview
mp3, summary
INT 4
Interview
INT 5
Interview
INT 6
Interview
INT 7
Interview
INT 8
Interview
INT 9
Interview
INT 10
Interview
INT 11
Interview
INT 12
Interview
INT 13
Interview
INT 14
Interview
INT 15
Interview
INT 16
Interview
notes
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
mp3, summary
translated
transcription,
mp3
notes
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
Watershed Component
staff
1
couple in Kudmi
participants in training,
Inguti
kebele leader of Kudmi
1
zonal meeting
7
widow Kudmi
1
zonal commitee
member, Kudmi
(several times)
zonal commitee
member, Chihona
(several times)
zonal commitee
member 2, Chihona
(several times)
2
1
1
1
1
boy herding cattle,
Kudmi
1
commercial farmer
from BD, Kudmi
1
farmer Inguti
1
farmer Inguti
1
women Kudmi
3
farmer Tagel Wedefit
1
elderly women, Inguti
2
89
INT 17
Interview
notes, mp3
INT 18
Interview
notes
INT 19
Interview
INT 20
Interview
INT 21
Interview
INT 22
Interview
INT 23
Interview
INT 24
Interview
INT 25
Interview
INT 26
INT 27
INT 28
INT 29
INT 30
INT 31
INT 32
INT 33
INT 34
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
translated
transcription,
mp3
notes, mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
translated
transcription,
mp3
notes
notes
notes
notes
notes
notes
notes
notes
notes
INT OFF 1
Interview
notes
INT OFF 2
Interview
notes
INT OFF 3
Interview
notes
INT OFF 4
Interview
notes
INT OFF 5
Interview
notes
INT OFF 6
INT OFF 7
Interview
Interview
notes
notes
INT OFF 8
Interview
notes
INT OFF 9
Interview
INT OFF 10
Interview
INT OFF 11
Interview
notes
translated
transcription,
mp3
notes
INT OFF 12
Interview
notes
widow, Inguti
commercial farmer,
Merawi
1
priest Kudmi
1
wage labourers Kudmi
1
couple, Inguti
1
farmer, Chihona
1
woman, Chihona
1
farmer, Kudmi
1
woman, Kudmi
1
zonal leaders at church
group leaders Kudmi
mother with 2 children
farmer, Inguti
farmer, Kudmi
farmers, Chihona
women fetching water
Board Chairman
farmer, Inguti
5
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
Interviews with
officials
Official from MoWR,
Addis Abeba (several
times)
KIDMO leader (several
times)
Resident Engineer
(several times)
Cooperative
Administrator (several
times)
Agricultural Water
Engineer (several times)
Engineer (several times)
DA (several times)
Agronomist (several
times)
Relocation Officer
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
CPA officers, Merawi
4
BoARD Bahir Dar
Merawi Service
Cooperative members
(several times)
1
1
90
INT OFF 13
Interview
notes
Woreda officials,
Merawi (several times)
3
82
Participant
Observation
OBS 1
OBS 2
OBS 3
OBS 4
OBS 5
Participant
observation
Participant
observation
Participant
observation
Participant
observation
Participant
observation
summary,
videos, pictures
Training Inguti, 2 days
summary, mp3
Training Tagel Wedefit,
3 days
summary, mp3
Training Inamirt, 3 days
summary
Training Amarit, 3 days
summary,
videos, pictures
Canal building Inguti, 1
day
Transect Walks
TW1
Transect walk
drawings,
summary
TW2
Transect walk
drawings,
summary
from secondary
structures to quaternary
canals, Chihona
watering stations along
main canal, Kudmi
Maps
MAP 1
MAP 2
MAP 3
MAP
Map of
Command Area
Map of
Commandmodified
Map of
Command,
AutoCAD
several maps,
illustrations
pdf
Demis Wondimu, Site
Engineer
jpg
MAP1 - modified
myself
AutoCAD in
pdf
Demis Wondimu, Site
Engineer
jpg
Vigerske, MA thesis
Project Documents
Feasibility Study,
1995
WUAs Working
Paper, 2005
Cost Recovery
Study, 2008
ADF Appraisal
Report, 2001
Stakeholder
Analysis, 2008
Monthly and
Quarterly Reports
2003-2010
AWUAs GoE Draft
Agreement, 2009
AWUAs GoE Draft
Proclamation, 2009
Cooperative
Proclamation
3D-Visualisierung
des Projektes
Ato Fasikaw, MoWR,
Bahir Dar
Ato Worku, KIDMO
Coordinator
Ato Zerihun, Resident
Engineer
Document
copy
Document
copy
Document
copy
Document
pdf
Internet
Document
pdf
Irit
Documents
xls, .doc, some
printed
Ato Zerihun, Resident
Engineer
Document
copy
Document
copy
Document
pdf
Internet
Document
pdf
Vigerske (author)
Ato Bantiget, MoWR,
Addis
Ato Bantiget, MoWR,
Addis
91
Mecha Woreda
Report, 2009
Koga 3D
Visualisierung MA
thesis, 2008
Document
copy
Woreda Administration
Merawi
Document
pdf
from the Author
Vigerske
92