Institutional aspects of conservation agriculture: Water Users Associations.

Fresh water is a finite resource for many countries around the globe. Its availability is decreasing both in quantity and quality, while the competition for water is increasing due to growing world population and demand for food and attempts to improve living standard. The management of scarce water resources, the need for water conservation and restoration of the environment, damaged due to ineffective water management require changes in the water managing policies and institutions. The way water resources in FSU were managed in the second half of the past century had both positive and negative effect and contributed to the existing situation. On one hand, extensive development of water resources led to transformation of millions of hectares of virgin lands into agricultural production, providing millions of people with food and livelihoods. On the other hand, the over-exploitation of water resources led to drastic changes of the environment: many water bodies, such as lakes, small rivers, and delta wetlands had dried up. The Aral Sea basin is one of the dramatic examples of the negative impacts of large-scale irrigation interventions. The state-controlled era of development in the Soviet period has a legacy of standardized procedures and rules formulated at the top. The shortcomings of such a water management included fragmentation, duplication and highly administrative approach, without considering the needs of the environment and input of water users into planning, allocating, and managing of water resources. Presently, in most parts of the world water users play a growing role in water resources management and water conservation programs, in all water sub-sectors. Especially in irrigated agriculture, which in some countries is using over 90 % of the available water resources, the input of water users into water management is essential. This paper presents an analytical view of the role and importance of water users organizations/associations (WUOs /WUAs) in the irrigated agriculture and under irrigation management transfer (IMT) in Central Asia region. Water Users Associations are an excellent vehicle to promote participatory irrigation management (PIM) and water conservation in agriculture, offering many water and economic advantages to the farmers who become WUA members. Besides securing water and providing for its equitable distribution, WUAs can purchase a variety of agricultural inputs and machinery, as well assist to obtain a credit. The WUAs can serve as wholesome units for improving water and land productivity at a basin-scale and institutionalize integrated water natural resources management. Other advantage of WUAs is that structurally, they can form a basic unit for water management in the basin and facilitate conjunctive water management, consider protection of groundwater and use of drainage water, as well as sustainability of the environment.