Environmental Engineering Reference
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national organizations. Farmers in the cotton sector are usually highly indebted to their credi
tors. In a de capitalized agricultural sector, monetary water fees are doomed to fail.
Second, water fees as incentives to grow less water demanding crops cannot work if there
is no free choice which crops one may grow. As described above, state quotas on cotton and
tobacco still exist. These cotton quotas are not only a legacy of socialist production plans but
also present a lucrative system for a network of officials and local investors. Such constraints
limit the variety of choices for farmers to redirect production to less water intensive crops, for
instance. For farmers, it is actually more lucrative to grow other crops like fruit, which would
give them more profit and do not require as much water as cotton. But they simply do not
have the option to change the cultivation patterns.
One NGO representative cynically describes the situation as follows: “If I would be a re
ally smart farmer and would have had studied at Cambridge, then I would know my rights and
could get access to land. But if I then decide not to grow cotton, I will not get any water”
(NGO representative, Khudjand, 09/03/2004). This ultimately limits efforts to develop the
agricultural sector, which is also a precondition for successful water reforms: “Donors always
want to support democracy and societal development, but it stops at the corruption in the
cotton market” (Deputy regional director of an international donor agency, Khudjand,
10/04/2005).
Beyond the cotton sector, the agricultural economy is characterized by patronage patterns
as well. The people's lack of awareness of WUAs and other structural changes (like the trans
formation of the FSK into DFs) can be explained by a lack of access to information, but it is
also a consequence of the fact that those “changes” do not affect power relations in their daily
lives. In the perception of most local people, the structures remained more or less the same.
For example, the brigades the sub units of the FSK also often still exist (informally). The
subgroups of the WUA are sometimes organized according to the former brigades. Roles are
usually assigned to persons and not to organizations. The rais is the patron of the village.
Whether he is the rais of the kolkhoz , the DF, or the WUA and whether his networks lead to
Moscow, Dushanbe, or an international donor is secondary and often unknown. At WUAs the
leaders of the DF often play an important role.
The insufficient implementation of and coordination between land and water reform rein
forces the reliance on existing power structures and hinders empowerment. The unclear status
of the water management facilities and the resulting uncertainty regarding access to water con
tributed to the reluctance towards the dissolution of the FSK. The DF still controls access to
the main resources, especially land and water. The fear of lacking access to water is obviously a
further hindrance to farmers becoming independent. They remain in the collective DF as they
then have a perceived secure access to irrigation water. Moreover, many farmers still consider
canal maintenance as the responsibility of the FSK. This is also the reason why a sense of
ownership and responsibility for the state of channels cannot evolve among the farmers. In
this case, reluctance to pay and to participate in O&M is a consequence of their lack of know
ledge about land reform and about their rights in general.
Imperfect land reform impedes water institutional reform and vice versa: Deficiencies in
water institutional reform create insecurities for farmers, thereby hindering their empowerment
against vested interests. Ambiguities in legislature as well as the farmers' lack of information
and knowledge help to preserve the status quo for those benefitting from the present institu
tional arrangements. In this way, existing patrimonial characteristics of the agricultural sector
such as patronage relationships are perpetuated. They undermine democratic water governance
and hinder the empowerment of water users and equitable water distribution.
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