Research On Independence Mechanism Of Water User Associations In Irrigation Reform Of China

Irrigation plays a key role in China's agricultural development; however, traditional irrigation management system could not meet the requirement of irrigation development. Self-financing Irrigation and Drainage District, the so-called SIDD, is a kind of alternative irrigation pattern introduced from foreign countries in the 1990s. In general SIDD consists of two components: water user associations (WUAs) and water supply company (WSC). SIDD can connect with market system to realize the benign circulation of water user self-management and economic independence of the irrigation districts. China implemented experiments of SIDD starting from 1995 through the World Bank project.Now the development of WUAs comes to the critical period. There are many disputes about WUAs worldwide at the moment, including international organizations. The hypothesis of Irrigation Management Transform was that water users can have more impetus than the institution imbursed by central government and can make the management of water resource more efficient and more sustainable. But up to now there are few positive research achievements about WUAs' impacts and efficiency, especially the economic independence mechanism of WUAs. It is imperative to decide whether the development of WUAs can be succeeded in the long run. The key question was to determine whether WUAs could be the direction as an alternative way of irrigation management reform in China.Per such situation, this paper was proposed to make in-depth analyses on WUAs' impacts on agricultural development as well as the economic independence mechanism of WUAs in order to make policy suggestions for future irrigation reform. On the basis of previous work of IAE/CAAS on WUA research, this paper tried to utilize a new approach of Difference-in-Difference to test the differential impacts on agricultural production and farmer income because of WUAs. Data were collected through farmer survey of Zhanghe and Dongfeng Irrigation Districts of Hubei Province with a sample size of 10 WUAs and 208 HHs, while in Tieshan Irrigation District of Hunan province, the sample size is 10 HHs of Jingtang WUA and 10 HHs of non-WUAs for a trial analysis. Random sampling was utilized for the survey of HH Questionnaire, and the chairpersons & accountants of WUAs were interviewed.It was concluded from a new point of view that WUAs could be a direction and a choice as an alternative way of irrigation management reform. It was found that WUAs have advantages in saving water resources, improving water use efficiency, helping disadvantaged groups such as women and elderly people to get the water for irrigation use and so on. Also WUAs can play an effective role in promoting farmer participation in irrigation management, even though this needs further research and observations in the future. WUAs possesses huge potential to get developed and to be scaled up in China.