Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet beside their active involvement, donors also exert indirect influence. First, through their
financial budget support; second, through the objectives they formulate in their projects and to
which all those must orient who want to be included in projects. This influences problem
perception and agenda setting. Exemplarily this is mirrored in the statement of the vice
minister of the
MinVodKhoz
in Tajikistan: “My scientific subject is exactly the management of
water resources, because this gets very much attention by the financial institutes, when they
make investments and give grants for this issue.”
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To sum up, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both neopatrimonial regimes, Kyrgyzstan
has stronger democratic structures in decision making institutions than Tajikistan. The results
show, however, that the more participatory decision making process in Kyrgyzstan has coun
terfactual effects as 'partial democratization' allows veto playing but not agenda setting for
some of the actors. Contradictory interests therefore lead to a mutual blockade or to inexact
framework laws without sub normative implementation mechanisms. This is the reason why it
was more difficult in Kyrgyzstan than in Tajikistan to agree on the legal and policy fundamen
tals of WIR. Two other features of the decision making process can explain why policies are
decided on without the will for implementation: First, pleasing certain donor interests entails
decreeing laws and other normative acts without real reform commitment; second, it fulfills
certain symbolic politics: both states use water in the international arena to detract public at
tention from domestic problems. In Kyrgyzstan, focus is placed on regional geopolitics and
transboundary water management issues. In Tajikistan, international campaigns and confe
rences are organized.
Institutional Conditions of the Agricultural Sector
The agricultural sector is the direct economic context in which most water institutional re
forms are conducted. It has its strongest impact on WUA and ISF reform. It has shared as well
as differing features in both cases: While Kyrgyzstan conducted a relatively fast and radical
land reform, in Tajikistan the process is slow and occurs mostly on paper without practical
impacts. State production prescriptions and old farm structures and dependencies are still in
place. Therefore, the Kyrgyz institutional environment is more suitable for enabling reforms
that implicitly assume independent farmers as decision makers on their crop choice and water
use. In Tajikistan, farmers cannot, for instance, turn to less water intensive crops even if they
wanted to. Also, there is less of an incentive to invest in the O&M through ISF payment or
WUA commitment when the channels and irrigated land are not perceived as 'own', but as that
of the FSK. Similar conclusions were made by Thurman (2002: 58) in his study of irrigation in
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where he observed a link between the degree of
privatization and the readiness to become active for O&M of I&D systems as “in areas where
the restructuring of farms has been largely cosmetic, farmers do not view themselves as part of
the solution”.The output concerning the actual living conditions of the farmers is similar in
both countries, however: Rural poverty is widespread and the sector is characterized by re
liance on subsistence agriculture, de capitalization, and widespread barter economy. These
conditions make the implementation of market based reforms with monetary mechanisms
difficult in both countries. The failure of general ISF collection particularly can be attributed to
this variable.
This variable is in so far connected to the neopatrimonial regime as unsound formal re
forms strengthen (in Tajikistan) or at least do not overcome (in Kyrgyzstan) informal institu
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