Innovation Of Property Right, Technical Efficiency And Groundwater Irrigation Management

With rising population, urbanization and industrialization, the growing scarcity of water resources has become a serious threat to the country future development. Since I 970s, groundwater has become more and more important in North China agricultural production. At the same time, the exploitation of groundwater has also resulted in water table drop and other environmental problems. Traditionally, water problems are mainly treated as engineering problems. However, there is growing evidence showing that water management and institutional arrangements are important measures for dealing with water shortage problems. Since the late 1 980s, many developing countries have begun to transfer irrigation management responsibilities from government to farmers? organization or other private organization in order to reduce government financial burden, improve water use efficiency and water supply efficiency of water project. Small irrigation system has also presented the same evolution trend and many different property right irrigation systems have formed in rural China. Although the impacts of various property rights of irrigation systems on water resources use differ, and understanding property right innovation has important implications for water policy, almost no empirical research has been found in China. The all goals of this thesis are to have a better understanding of property right innovation, determinants of water supply and technical efficiency in the groundwater irrigation system. Econometric models on property right innovation, determinants of technical efficiency and water supply in the groundwater irrigation system are developed and estimated using several sets of data from randomly selected 30 villages, 87 groundwater irrigation system in 3 counties in Hebei Province. The results show that the collectively owned groundwater irrigation system has been gradually substituted by a more market-oriented private or quasi- private irrigation system since 1980. Major determinants of the property right innovation in irrigation system are the increasing water shortage problems, stresses from local population growth with declining land endowment, weakening the village or community economic powder, improved human capital of the community, market development, and water finance and credit policies. The innovation of property right of groundwater irrigation system will have obviously impact on technical efficiency. Compared with the collectively owned groundwater irrigation system, private or quasi-private irrigation system have been more beneficial for technical efficiency. In addition to property right, management mechanism, scale of irrigation system and age of irrigation system also have important influence on technical efficiency. Based on the findings of this study, a number of policy recommendations are made for future reform of agricultural irrigation system in China. Author proposes that government should encourage property right innovation of groundwater irrigation system by effective water finance and credit policy instruments. However, if water pnce can not rationally reflect water resource value, property right innovation of groundwater irrigation system will result in overexploitation and degradation of groundwater. To promote water resources sustainable development, combined with rational water pricing and property right innovation should be emphasized by future water...