An Empirical Research On The Effects Of Reconstruction And Water-saving Project In Zekou Irrigation District

An irrigation district has provided the chance to promote a sustainable agriculture,which is the foundation of national economy. The effective management of irrigation can also secure a country's safety in food, improve local farmers' income level and their developing environment. In the 1950 s, China starts its construction in irrigation district, but with a lot of problems such as low building standards, incomplete installation of irrigation infrastructure and so on. At the same time, through a long time's operation, most of the infrastructure has been broken or burnt. All of these factors have been obstructing the irrigation district from functioning well and realizing its purposes. And considering the increasing water shortage in China, there is a higher demand for the well operation and management of irrigation district. Thus the irrigation districts of China have trapped into a dilemma. In the 1990 s, as a solution, Chinese government put forward a reconstruction and water-saving project in all of its large irrigation districts. Zekou is one of them. From 1998,Zekou has completed nine stages of the project. And this paper, as an empirical research is aimed to evaluate its effects.Based on existing foreign and domestic literature, the post-project evaluation theory is chosen as a suitable starting point of evaluation. And combining characteristics of the project in Zekou, LFA, one of methods recommended by post-project evaluation theory and blessed with both of the quantitative and qualitative characteristics, is considered to be a feasible tool of comprehensive effective evaluation.Concretely, the paper firstly measured four-level purposes of the project, and then analyzed their relationships in depth with help of LFA. The conclusion is that the reconstruction and water-saving project in Zekou has realized its original purposes to some degree, like securing food safety in local sense, improving income of farmers. Although the project has done a good job in economic and social field, unfortunately, there is also some problems in the management of project. And a good resolution of these problems is muchfavorable to following management of project in the future.