152
neither provided for functional local irrigation sector management nor involved
local water users in their creation (Theesfeld 2005 ). As a result, many WUAs (e.g.
in Bulgaria) terminated after one irrigation season ( ibid ). Sehring ( 2009 ) reports
that newly established WUAs in post-socialist Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are undermined by informal practices such as patronage and unauthorised water withdrawal.
If the WUAs’ tasks are to deliver water to its members in due time, keep irrigation
and drainage canals maintained, punish those who do not comply with rules and
resolve confl icts within the WUA, they were barely effective on the ground ( ibid ).
Instead, when the head of the WUA was a local patron, he/she was in most cases
able to ensure compliance with water rules using the authority of his position
(Sehring 2009 ). Despite Central Asian governments issuing decrees on the establishment of WUAs and creating thousands of WUAs within a very short period of
time, in reality most of them exist on paper only (Wegerich 2009 ; Abdullaev et al.
2010 ). Consequently, many commentators see WUAs in Central Asia as inactive
and not fi nancially viable (Wegerich 2000 ; Abdullaev et al. 2010 ). A low level of
user participation and frequent external interventions into WUA internal procedures
are additional constraints for WUAs’ malfunctioning in Central Asia (Schlüter et al.
2010 ). In the following section, we take a closer look fi rst at the origin and purpose
of WUAs in the Fergana Valley (Sect. 11.2 ) and then study how they are working in
practice (Sect. 11.3 ) before assessing their effectiveness in terms of the criteria
listed above (Sect. 11.4 ).
11.2 WUAs as Building Blocks of Irrigation Management
in the Fergana Valley
The emergence and practice of WUAs in the Fergana Valley cannot be understood
without appreciating the history of irrigation management in the region. The chapter
by Hermann Kreutzmann, analysing the trajectory of large-scale irrigation from
Tsarist times to the present day, provides the necessary insight into the economic,
political and sociocultural factors which have shaped this major water engineering
project (Kreutzmann 2015 , in this volume). In our chapter, we recollect three key
factors of Fergana’s irrigation system: its strong path dependency in both material
and social terms, the powerful interdependence of water management and agricultural production and the confl ictual nature of transboundary cooperation between
today’s independent post-socialist republics.
11.2.1 Early Origins of WUAs
In the Fergana Valley, WUAs were fi rst established in the mid-1990s in Kyrgyzstan
(Sehring 2009 ) but only in the early 2000s in Tajikistan ( ibid ) and in Uzbekistan
(Hamidov 2007 ; Abdullaev et al. 2009 ). In all instances, the driving forces behind
T. Moss and A. Hamidov
neither provided for functional local irrigation sector management nor involved
local water users in their creation (Theesfeld 2005 ). As a result, many WUAs (e.g.
in Bulgaria) terminated after one irrigation season ( ibid ). Sehring ( 2009 ) reports
that newly established WUAs in post-socialist Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are undermined by informal practices such as patronage and unauthorised water withdrawal.
If the WUAs’ tasks are to deliver water to its members in due time, keep irrigation
and drainage canals maintained, punish those who do not comply with rules and
resolve confl icts within the WUA, they were barely effective on the ground ( ibid ).
Instead, when the head of the WUA was a local patron, he/she was in most cases
able to ensure compliance with water rules using the authority of his position
(Sehring 2009 ). Despite Central Asian governments issuing decrees on the establishment of WUAs and creating thousands of WUAs within a very short period of
time, in reality most of them exist on paper only (Wegerich 2009 ; Abdullaev et al.
2010 ). Consequently, many commentators see WUAs in Central Asia as inactive
and not fi nancially viable (Wegerich 2000 ; Abdullaev et al. 2010 ). A low level of
user participation and frequent external interventions into WUA internal procedures
are additional constraints for WUAs’ malfunctioning in Central Asia (Schlüter et al.
2010 ). In the following section, we take a closer look fi rst at the origin and purpose
of WUAs in the Fergana Valley (Sect. 11.2 ) and then study how they are working in
practice (Sect. 11.3 ) before assessing their effectiveness in terms of the criteria
listed above (Sect. 11.4 ).
11.2 WUAs as Building Blocks of Irrigation Management
in the Fergana Valley
The emergence and practice of WUAs in the Fergana Valley cannot be understood
without appreciating the history of irrigation management in the region. The chapter
by Hermann Kreutzmann, analysing the trajectory of large-scale irrigation from
Tsarist times to the present day, provides the necessary insight into the economic,
political and sociocultural factors which have shaped this major water engineering
project (Kreutzmann 2015 , in this volume). In our chapter, we recollect three key
factors of Fergana’s irrigation system: its strong path dependency in both material
and social terms, the powerful interdependence of water management and agricultural production and the confl ictual nature of transboundary cooperation between
today’s independent post-socialist republics.
11.2.1 Early Origins of WUAs
In the Fergana Valley, WUAs were fi rst established in the mid-1990s in Kyrgyzstan
(Sehring 2009 ) but only in the early 2000s in Tajikistan ( ibid ) and in Uzbekistan
(Hamidov 2007 ; Abdullaev et al. 2009 ). In all instances, the driving forces behind
T. Moss and A. Hamidov