Water Governance, Participation, and Poverty: A Critique with Reference to Irrigation Projects and Water User Associations in Morocco

Paper to be presented at the International Workshop on ‘Water Poverty and Social Crisis: Perspectives for Research and Action’, Agadir, Morocco; 12-15 December 2005.

By Sylvia I. Bergh, D.Phil. student in Development Studies, University of Oxford, UK, October 2005. Contact: .

Work in progress – please do not cite – comments are welcome.

This paper addresses the third aspect of the overarching conference theme of ‘Water Poverty and Social Crisis’, namely that of active and effective participation in the management of water resources, and in administrative, legal, political and economic processes of decision-making.

As Franks (2004: 7-8) points out, since water governance is about the way water is allocated and managed, it is essentially about decision-making and hence constitutes a political process. This paper aims to support Franks’ call that this needs to be freely acknowledged and internalized in the water sector, where there is still a tendency to want to operate outside the political sphere. Franks also asserts that while participation is often seen as the panacea to the problems of water governance, further research needs to be done on the forums and settings (platforms) in which people can participate. This paper intends to contribute to such research by examining the functioning of (irrigation) water user associations in Morocco.

The paper is organized as follows. First, we will discuss the global water consensus, the conceptual underpinnings of its participation element and possible critiques thereof. Second, the World Bank’s overall record on this issue will be examined. Third, this paper will provide some brief background on Morocco’s agriculture and irrigation sector, and highlight some issues concerning its Water User Associations (WUAs). Fourth, three examples of the World Bank’s experiences with Community-Driven Development (CDD) and WUAs specifically in Morocco will be reviewed. The last section will then illustrate the issues raised in this paper by presenting some preliminary findings from a case study of a World Bank irrigation project in Morocco.

Recent water sector policies in Morocco fit well into the (revised[1]) global water ‘consensus’, which holds that ‘participation offers people the opportunity to meet their responsibilities, as well as the opportunity to claim their rights’ (UNDESA: 378). Other expected benefits of participation are that it facilitates more informed decision-making, eases conflict resolution, and brings in the voices of relatively powerless groups, such as women and indigenous people. In the irrigation sector, attention has been shifted towards promotion of local governance and transfer of irrigation management to user groups commonly referred to as Water Users Associations (WUAs) (Khanal 2003: 1).

However, the same international organisations which promote this new consensus acknowledge that ‘the actual progress in participatory approaches has been modest and uneven.’ (UNDESA: 378) Indeed, a wealth of recent research on water-user associations and village level management structures demonstrates the limitations of community and the ways in which such institutions can reproduce hierarchies of power, and reinforce exclusion of the marginalized (see Cleaver 2004 for a bibliography). One reason for this is that during structural adjustment reform processes, the state was encouraged to withdraw but adequate user associations had not been allowed to grow strong enough to take over the state’s former functions, often merely remaining empty shells (Ruf no date: 1). A second reason for lackluster performance of participatory arrangements is that many governments have a very instrumental view of local communities and related community-based organizations, whose active involvement is normally sought only at the project implementation stage, and not throughout the whole policy or project cycle (UNDESA: 378).

Arguably, a more deep-seated reason for these mixed results is that the ‘functional model’ of the WUAs has dominated the consensus. This model assumes that the WUAs are non-partisan, non-political and homogeneous bodies, and perform the irrigation management tasks as designed. It neglects the conditions under which accepted rules and organizations come into being, i.e. the local socio-political dynamics in organizational evolution. Hence this model does not recognize the WUAs’ political character (Khanal 2003: 4).

Franks and Cleaver (2003: 1) point to the underlying approach behind this functional model, namely the idea of institutional crafting, as epitomized in the work of Elinor Ostrom who specifies ‘Design Principles’ for robust and enduring institutions for common property resource management (Ostrom: 1990). This and subsequent works (see Franks and Cleaver: 2003for references) tend to emphasize the formalization of institutional arrangements (e.g. the principle of representation of users), the codification of rules and regulations (i.e. internally efficient mechanisms for conflict resolution and resource allocation), and the strict exercise of sanctions against free-riders. These design principles were then (often crudely) translated into policy and practice, and soon showed their shortcomings. As hinted at above with regard to WUAs, these shortcomings include first, the functionalist assumptions underlying institutional thinking; second, the evolutionism on which it is based (i.e.‘making good’ the deficiencies of traditional or indigenous institutions) and third, the over-simplification of the social world and processes within it (see Franks and Cleaver 2003: 2ff. for a detailed discussion).

This last point refers to the fact that neither communities nor resources consistently exist with clear boundaries, and that natural resources are not simply commodities but invested with social and symbolic meaning to people. Moreover, people’s decisions about natural resources may rarely correspond to external perceptions of efficiency and optimization. Most importantly, authority structures and the social norms of resolving competition and conflict over resources are rarely clear and consistent but diverse and contingent, subject to negotiation and messy compromise (Franks and Cleaver 2003: 3).

For example, Khanal (2003: 8) describes a WUA in Nepal that was seen as platform to check the strength of the political parties. Hence, WUA agendas were heavily focused by party politics. While this might be an extreme case of politicization, preliminary findings from our case study in Morocco seem to confirm this possibility (see discussion below).

Having briefly discussed the global water consensus, the conceptual underpinnings of its participation element and possible critiques thereof in a first section, the second part will now examine the World Bank’s overall record in this area.

With the renewed importance given to the poverty reduction agenda in the 1990s, the World Bank invited civil society organizations to play a bigger role in the development process. This was based on the assumption that compared with the state or the private sector, such organizations would be closer to the poor (and thus be able to provide services to the poor as sub-contractors of the State), promote transparency and ‘accountability’, be less bureaucratic or corrupt, and to provide legitimacy to reforms (Hatcher 2005: 11-12). Indeed, the Bank’s financial support for projects with community approaches has increased from less than 5 percent of total Bank lending in 1989 to about 25 percent in 2003 (World Bank/OED 2005).

As Kamat (2004: 160) points out, ‘in a curious flip-flop of what served as a universal conceptual frame for development planning, the state, today, is represented as fragmented by private interests (otherwise referred to as corruption), and hence inept at representing the will of the people, whereas civil society is seen as the honest broker of ‘the people’s interests’.’ This means that civil society becomes the key site of socio-economic struggle, replacing political society as the key site of political struggle. It also signifies the decline of the concept of citizenship and the accompanying political, civil and socio-economic rights; this in turn allows donors such as the World Bank to avoid issues of power relations and resource allocation (Hatchet 2005: 15-16). Indeed, it could be argued that the fashionable concept of ‘social capital’ serves to perpetuate this trend. As Harriss (2002: 102) holds, ‘the main effect of the language of social capital in World Bank-speak is to suggest that ‘getting the social relations right’ is a technical and not a political process.’ In sum, the World Bank’s and other donor’s enthusiasm for ‘participation’ and partnership with civil society organizations can be explained by referring to their giving the ‘possibility of a kind of democracy through ‘popular participation’, but without the inconveniences of contestational politics and the conflicts of values and ideas which are a necessary part of democratic politics’ (Hearn1999: 4).

However, as the World Bank itself acknowledges (see World Bank/OED 2005), there are several shortcomings with the CDD approach. Most interesting for our purposes here is that despite community participation, it has been difficult to reach the poorest. This is because apart from data problems to identify them, the new, sophisticated targeting strategies have been difficult to apply since political concerns have often forced governments to include non-poor regions. And within the community, it is difficult to reach the poorest because they have the least amount of time to participate in meetings and training events and hence often do not benefit from the capacity enhancing efforts. Moreover, the poor often lack the resources to contribute and the “better off” in the community contribute on their behalf. This has the potential of changing the local balance of power even more against the poor.

With regards to World Bank watershed projects, an internal Bank review[2] (Boerma 2000: 13-14) found that in many projects the two main purposes for securing participation in the implementation of projects are not achieved. These purposes are first, to ensure that project activities and funds are appropriately targeted to meet problems and issues as defined by communities themselves; and second, to achieve a sense of ownership of the process so that longer term sustainability can be ensured. Most importantly, only a quarter of all projects have actually included specific measures for targeting the most vulnerable groups in project areas and ensuring their ability to benefit from project inputs. The review also found that the impact of project investments on the poorest populations is being actively monitored in only slightly less than a quarter of all projects. However, this trend is improving, since the percentage of projects that included specific measures to target the poor has risen from 8% in the early 1990s to 47% in the late 1990s (ibid.: 32). This is also supported by the OED evaluation of the World Bank’s 1993 water sector strategy (Pittman 2002: 12), which notes that the poverty focus of irrigation and drainage projects rose by 23 percent after the Strategy.[3]

Apart from emphasizing a lack of focus on poverty, the watershed review challenges the ‘design principles’ view described above, since it pointed out that ‘in reality most communities are more often socially and economically quite fractionalized and subject to a variety of political, economic and other vested interests.’ Similarly, it notes that vulnerable people tend to be more risk-averse than better-established farmers and thus are often reluctant participants in project activities unless there is an immediate prospect of short-term gain (ibid.: 33).

There are other signs that the World Bank is becoming increasingly aware of the shortcomings of the functionalist approach. The Bank’s Senior Water Advisor, David Grey (2005), mentioned that the main management challenge is not a vision but more effective implementation, and that the Bank needs to be more attentive to the political economy of water. Similarly, the OED’s Rural Water Projects evaluation (2000: 31) warns that ‘great care must be taken to base projects on local practices and traditions rather than internationally generalized models that specify how villages ought to behave.’

As for the Middle East and North Africa region, it receives the largest (as a proportion of regional lending) water portfolio in the Bank,[4] and the trend is rising (World Bank 2004: 34). This is because the Middle East and North Africa Region has the highest level of water stress. The recent 2004 Water Strategy recommends technical innovation and more efficient allocation and use of surface water and groundwater. It notes that ‘the challenges of re-use of water, desalination, irrigation modernization and orderly mechanisms for the voluntary transfer of water from low-value uses (especially agriculture, which uses 85 percent of the water) to high-value uses (especially urban and industrial) are of high priority.’ Finally, it stresses that the primary focus in the region is on better management rather than building new infrastructure (ibid.: 30).

Turning now to the third part of this paper, the particular case of Morocco and its irrigation sector, it seems to partly contradict this last point. While better management has been sought in the form of creating WUAs, the government is also continuing its considerable investments in irrigation infrastructure, as we will see below.

First however, it might be useful to briefly consider some background information about Morocco and its agricultural sector. Morocco is a lower middle-income country with a GDP per capita of US$1,250 and a population of 30.5 million growing at 1.8 percent annually. Since 1991 the rate of growth of GDP fell by more than half, averaging only 1.9 percent during the 1990s, and per capita incomes stagnated causing the country to lag behind others in the MENA Region. Agriculture contributes about 12-17 percent of GDP depending on rainfall, and employs about half of the work force and 60 percent of the female labor force. The main challenges for the agricultural sector are the doubling of the frequency of severe droughts to one year in two in the 1990s, limited use of selected cereal seeds (in the 2002/03 season usage actually fell by 20 percent to 488,000 tons), fertilizer and mechanical equipment, as well as the fragmentation of holdings (85 percent of farms are under 10 hectare and 49 percent under 3 ha). A measure of the inefficiency of cereal farming is that the government’s guaranteed price for cereals is roughly twice the world price and that the authorities raised wheat import tariffs to 135 percent in order to protect cereal farmers (World Bank OED 2005: 1-2).

Only about 14 percent (1.2 million hectares) of the 8.4 million hectares of arable land is irrigated which makes agricultural production highly vulnerable to drought. Even so, public investment in irrigation has been substantial, typically accounting for almost half of all agricultural sector expenditures or six to eight percent of national investment, until well into the 1990s. Morocco’s irrigation sector is split among public sector capital-intensive large-scale irrigation schemes covering 485,000 hectares that are operated by nine Regional Authorities for Agricultural Development (ORMVAs: Office Regional de Mise en Valeur Agricole), traditional small and medium-scale irrigation covering 400,000 hectares owned and operated by local communities (mostly producing for auto-consumption only), and about 100,000 hectares of private development (World Bank OED 2005: 1-2). Water user associations now cover 71 percent of Morocco’s irrigated area. Not all these organizations, however, are active. For example, although the Moulouya region has 77 WUAs, only 16 are operational. Similarly, in Doukkala only 24 of 39 WUAs are active (World Bank OED 2005: 18).

In terms of the small and medium-scale irrigation schemes (both traditional and ‘modern’ i.e recently built or improved by the government), there are about 3,000 irrigation areas, whereof 66% have a size of less than 100ha and account for only 11% of the total irrigated surface; on the other hand, 5% of the total number of areas are bigger than 1,000ha and account for 53% of the total surface. Three-quarters of all such irrigated areas are privately owned (Elbouari 2004: 2). In the traditional small and medium-scale irrigation schemes, where canals are made of earth and customary water rights determine access to water, it is estimated that only 10% of the irrigation networks (which are 25,000km long) function well. This is why the government plans to improve the networks on 195.000ha between 2000 and 2020 - though the potential area to be improved is double the size (Elbouari 2004: 4). The works aim to both improve the ‘efficiency’ of the networks to reduce leakages and their management by the users, hence the preference to create WUAs on the areas to be improved.

These current and future works build on twenty years of experience of mostly World Bank and German-funded improvement schemes in the traditional small-and medium-scale irrigation sector, which started in the 1980s and include the following projects:

  • 1984-1988: First small- and medium-scale irrigation development project on 12,880ha.
  • 1988-1994: Second small- and medium-scale irrigation development project (PMH 2) on 28.000 ha;
  • 1997-2005: Small- and medium-scale irrigation development project in the North on 29.000 ha;
  • 2001-2006: First phase of the Irrigation Based Community Development Program on 9.500 ha.

The last project is our case study and will be discussed in more detail below. Between 1990 and 2000, more than 1032 WUAs were created on these perimeters (Elbouari 2004:4).