6. Conclusions and recommendations
Effective management of water resources is a critical policy
issue in arid areas. With a better understanding of the coupled
social-ecological systems, there is an increasing appreciation of the
role of community-based organizations in water resources management.
As a new management paradigm, WUAs has been adopted
widely by the government for promoting the IWRM reform in
the arid regions of NW China, but lack support from small-scale
farmers. This study reveals several reasons why WUAs are unable
to function effectively at the community level. The implication from
this study is that the IWRM reform should use measures that
reinforce locally available agricultural technologies adapted to arid
conditions. This will facilitate a shift from water-intensive crops to
water-saving crops and re-create a farmer-centered agricultural,
socialized service network.
Our findings indicate that local innovation and community
involvement in water management remains constrained because of
a top-down IWRM implementation structure. More focus is needed
on creating “institutional space” for small-scale farmers and local
officials (particularly township and village officials) to explore options
for improved water resource management and livelihood
adaptation based on local conditions. The equity of water allocation
should also be considered as an important factor in promoting the
IWRM reform.
Finally, and most importantly, in order to gain support from
farmers and farm communities, the study suggests that rebuilding
farmer WUAs and promoting the development of communitybased
water management system should remain a priority of the
IWRM reform. Management practices can be improved through a
series of practical measures. These include clarifying the responsibilities
and relationships between farmer WUAs and villagers'
committees; promoting the establishment of the natural
villageebased farmer WUAs that embed informal social institutions
and self-organized networks for irrigation water management; and
increasing rural women's participation in WUAs and community
water-related decision-making in the context of feminization of
agriculture.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Social Science
Foundation of China (08XSH011) and the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2012-k02). We would
like to thank Mi Zhou of the Department of Sociology at Lanzhou
University for her help in improving the survey questionnaire
design and Baocheng Jin of the School of Life Sciences at Lanzhou
University for creating the map depicted in Fig. 1. We are grateful to
Wenting Zhang, Shiling Lin, Jian Liu, Yanhua Zhang, Xiaohui Yang,
Chuhui Yuan, Shaojun Zhu, and Jing Dai of Lanzhou University, Mei
Deng of Northwest Normal University, and Jing Chai of Lanzhou City
College for assistance with data collection, scoring, and entry. In
addition, we appreciate the helpful suggestions of KuoRay Mao of
the University of Kansas in the preparation of this paper