Impacts Of The Interactions Among The Stakeholders On The Institutional Development Of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM)

China's food security plays a very important role to the food security in the world. And the increasingly severe shortage of water resources has become one of the most significant factors threatening the food security in China. Along with the population increase, industrial expansion and speeding-up of urbanization, the water resources, especially the water for agricultural uses are facing an extremely serious situation of shortage. Therefore, how to resolve the problem has attracted great attentions of the international society. By tracing the history of water uses, it could be found that no matter in China or in the other countries of the world, traditionally the engineering and technical means or measures had usually been applied to deal with water shortage, while the management institutional and policy ones had not been paid enough attention by the policy makers and the administrators for a long period. Therefore, it will be very necessary and significant to study the irrigation management institution and the influence factors on its evolution, and seek for a scientific and rational institution for the irrigation management.In the middle of 1990s, the concepts and approach of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) was introduced into China, by the World Bank funded large scale irrigation projects such as in Tieshan/Hunan Province and Shijin/Hebei Province Irrigation Districts and the Piyuan Canal rehabilitation project financed by the CNPAP (China Netherlabds Poverty Alleviation Project) in Hunan/Anhui Province, and gained the successes. Till October in 2004, there had been about 6, 000 Water User Associations (WUA) established in 22 provinces. However, only less than 1/3 of them were under normal operation. The others were in the paralytic or semi-paralytic situation. There are quite a lot of causes for that. However, the author found, through his field study in the rural area, that the situation of interactions among the relevant stakeholders, the transformation of their responsibilities and the locationing of the roles are the important but far less studied influential factors on the healthy development of WUAs and institional development of PIM.The author found, through the field study on Jingtang WUA in Tieshan Irrigation District, Hunan Province, that a rational mechanism of interest's coordination and distribution among the relevant stakeholders is needed to establish for the institutional development of PIM, and that the wrong locationing or absense of their roles, the overlaping or conflicts in their relations are the key constraints to the institutional development of PIM. During the process of establishment and development of Jingtang WUA, the relevant stakeholders had gained and balenced their respective interests through the dynamic interactions, and the institutional evolution of the irrigation management got promoted. On such bases, the author further studied the trends of, and constraints to, the institutional development of PIM, and proposed the recommendations that the effective mechanism of intervention needs to be gradually established to promote the benign interactions among the stakeholders, proper locationing of their roles, and transform process of PIM institutions.