Blueprints for water user associations' accountability versus local reality: evidence from South Kazakhstan

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been major changes in the agricultural sector in Kazakhstan. While during the Soviet Union agricultural production was organized in large scale state and collective farms, after independence Kazakhstan started to privatize the agricultural land and established water user associations (WUAs) on their territories. The paper critically evaluates the existing international blueprints of WUAs. The paper concludes that irrigation management transfer (IMT) should not imply rapid and complete withdrawal of the state, but that the state is, at least in the start up period, necessary to enforce accountability of new formed WUAs.

Keywords:

• water user association
• irrigation management transfer
• accountability
• Kazakhstan

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Marat Aitmagambetov for helpful discussions and feedback during my stay in Kazakhstan, Jeroen Warner and Bert Bruins for critical comments on a draft version, and Maria Pierce for editorial help. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their critical comments.