Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Agricultural Water Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat
The danger of naturalizing water policy concepts: Water productivity and
efficiency discourses from field irrigation to virtual water trade
Rutgerd Boelens, Jeroen Vos ∗
Irrigation and Water Engineering, Environmental Sciences Group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3a, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 17 December 2010
Accepted 29 June 2011
Keywords:
Water use efficiency
Productivity
Water policy
Water rights
Water allocation
Irrigation projects
a b s t r a c t
Naturalization and universal application of concepts such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ by policy makers and water experts in the water sector leads water managers and water users to internalize these
norms. As we show in this exploratory paper, the effects could be threefold: first, evidence suggests that
‘efficiency’ discourses may justify policies and projects that deprive smallholders of water use rights;
second, expert-driven water policy and project notions of efficiency tend to interfere with existing local
water management practices and may harm livelihood and production strategies, and third, water users
may come to blame themselves for underachieving according to the norms that are established in the
dominant power-knowledge structures. This article deals with three mutually connected water policy
arenas where maximization of water productivity and efficiency is fiercely promoted: technical water use
efficiency (the engineer’s realm), allocation efficiency (the economist’s realm) at national levels, and the
arena of international trade, where allocation efficiency is sought through virtual water flows embedded
in agricultural commodities trade.
© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
“There are many unused resources that are not traded, that
receive no investments and generate no employment. This is
because of the taboo of long-obsolete ideologies, out of idleness,
out of indolence and because of the syndrome of the dog in the
manger saying: “If I cannot eat, nobody will.” (. . .) we have fallen
in the trap of giving small lots of land to poor families with no
money to invest, thus they come to the State to ask for fertilizer,
seed, irrigation and protected prices. This smallholder mode of
production without technology is a vicious circle of miserable
poverty.” Alan García (El Comercio, 28 October 2007, p. a4).
According to Alan García, President of Peru, peasant and indigenous communities hold back Peru’s progress because they are
inefficient and unproductive due to their lack of financial capital and technology to bring their natural resources (land, water,
sea and minerals) into full productivity.1 The Peruvian Government has promoted the privatization of peasant and indigenous
communities’ natural resources to foster efficiency and productivity. An example is the new Peruvian water law passed in 2009.
It gives much importance to ‘efficiency’ and the National Water
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 317 484190.
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Vos).
1
Garcia published his ideas on natural resource policies in three articles in
national newspaper El Comercio, on 28-10-2007, 25-11-2007 and 2-03-2008.
0378-3774/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2011.06.013
Authority is charged with issuing ‘efficiency certificates’ to efficient users and operators. These certificates will give priority for
obtaining new water rights. Since the official government discourse
tends to praise the presumably highly efficient agribusiness companies, commercial plantations and mining enterprises, while Andean
communities and other economically less powerful groups have
less access to ‘modern’ technology or work with their own irrigation systems, the outcome of these new allocation rules can
be predicted. New, capital-intensive projects have been set up
already, neatly and explicitly targeting large-scale agribusiness
enterprises whereby – to make room for these endeavors – in many
cases poor farmers and peasant communities are deprived of their
livelihoods.2 As Alan García puts it, their lands are unproductive
and inefficiently used and he complains that communities refuse
to sell their fallow land and water (“idle property, useless”). “If that
same land were sold, assembled into large plantations, this would draw
technology”. Modern businesses and foreign investors “would make
them productive with heavy investment and knowledge input from
new buyers”. As he argues, Peruvian people have to follow “the experience of successful peoples”, which is “the only way in which we can
2
Examples of government projects in Peru that took water from peasant communities for infrastructure projects that benefit large commercial farmers are PETACC
(Ica-Huancavelica), and the Majes project (water from the Colca river). The Peruvian
Government is now developing new irrigation infrastructure which will exclusively benefit large agribusiness companies, for instance the Chavimochic and Olmos
projects.
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
progress” (Alan García, El Comercio, 28 October 2007, p. a4). Peasant
organizations and indigenous people in Peru have protested against
these policies but success has been motley.3
Not only in Peru does the government use ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ discourse to transform the water sector. In many national
and international water policy documents, these concepts are
presented as unambiguously calling for broad support. Policy documents often relate the need for water efficiency to the necessity
to produce more food for the growing population.4 The argument
is often used that irrigation provides an important share of global
food while water is increasingly becoming a scarce resource. Thus,
this requires the production of ‘more crops per drop’. However, the
actual effect of efficiency and productivity discourses and related
policies has hardly been examined.
These concepts are not neutral and policies based on these
notions might affect poor people negatively, thus creating more
poverty instead of less.
The objectification and naturalization of notions such as efficiency and productivity – providing them with an objective
appearance, as if they are a natural given – is powerful as a
discursive tool, but dangerous. Mainstream concepts and norms
(consciously or unconsciously) influence external and internal
judgments regarding local water management systems and practices. Use of certain terms provides legitimacy to judgments: they
imply certain parameters, norms and indicators for evaluation. As
Trottier (2008, p. 206) states: “(. . .) insisting on efficiency within the
dominant discourse on water management prevents us from understanding how water uses and technologies are embedded within social
processes that keep evolving”. In the case of water management this
evaluation is often based on one-dimensional criteria such as water
beneficially consumed for crop growth divided by total diverted
water, whereas reality is far more complex. The seemingly unambiguous definition of ‘beneficial use’ and ‘costs’ contrasts with the
fact that different actors in water control and governance have different interests, differing power to materialize these interests, and
different normative and cultural frameworks related to the costs
and benefits of water. The subsequent implementation of water
policies based on ‘optimizing efficiency’ may severely affect vulnerable groups in water society.
In this exploratory paper we will look at three (interconnected)
water policy arenas:
Technical water use efficiencies.
Economic water allocation efficiency (or water productivity) in
national water policies.
Economic water allocation efficiency at global level through
international food trade (expressed in international virtual water
flows).
The first arena involves maximizing technical water use efficiency
in irrigation systems – from an engineer’s perspective. Universalistic definitions and objectives of water use efficiency maximization
tend to significantly threaten a variety of local notions of efficiency.
Local actors tend to have ways to evaluate their irrigation systems’
functioning that differ substantially from engineers’ notions. As we
will argue, both within irrigation systems and at the watershed
level these engineers’ notions may cause serious livelihood and
sustainability problems for local water user collectives.
The second arena focuses on increasing water productivity by
introducing water pricing and marketing, aiming to maximize
water allocation efficiency from a neo-classical economists’ perspective. Policies based on such notions generally foresee a full cost
3
Examples of farmers’ protests against the new water law have been marches in
February and December 2008 in several cities of Peru, which resulted in negotiations
about the proposed new law.
4
See, e.g., Molden (2007), Kijne et al. (2003), Rosegrant et al. (2002).
17
pricing of water to encourage water saving and re-allocate water
to the ‘most efficient’ user (from an economic returns perspective).
Also here, we show how normative frameworks of different stakeholders are likely to hold different notions of values, costs and
benefits. Re-allocation of water (rights) to gain ‘productive efficiency’ may imply that some groups win and others lose access to
water, in particular the more vulnerable users (e.g., Swyngedouw,
2004; Castro, 2006; Achterhuis et al., 2010).
The third arena deals with efficient water allocation at the international level by trading agricultural commodities. Agricultural
products contain embedded (virtual) water used to produce these
goods. On a global scale, virtual water trade is regarded as a means
to increase global food production efficiency (Allan, 1998; Hoekstra
and Chapagain, 2008). In theory, food produced in water-abundant
areas shipped to water-deficit areas would be a policy tool to reduce
water scarcity in those water-scarce countries (Allan, 2001). Again,
mainstream discourse tends to sideline the experiences, aspirations and normative understandings of the less influential water
user groups, while their ‘truths’ are often not based on in-the field
evidence. We will show that virtual water flows, commonly, do not
save ‘real’ water as their efficiency and productivity claims sustain,
while international food trade can seriously affect the poor as they
become dependent upon cheap imported food and poor producers
cannot compete with the imported (and subsidized) food.
Before looking at these three different arenas, we will first elaborate on some theoretical aspects related to discursive power, the
naturalization of concepts and the actual effects of water policy
concepts.
2. Theoretical considerations about the use of efficiency
and productivity concepts
2.1. The production of ‘truth’
Ontologies, categorization and conceptualization are conditions
for water knowledge to exist, to be understood, to be worked with,
to be communicated. But this does not tell us what these concepts
and categories should look like, what criteria can differentiate one
category from another, or who has the privilege to establish the
order of things (Guzzini, 2005; Lukes, 2005). In this same vein,
the exercise of power, as Foucault observed, constantly generates
knowledge; in turn, knowledge continually brings about the effects
and reinforcement of power, and they mutually depend on each
other. Power cannot be exercised without knowledge, and knowledge necessarily engenders power (Foucault, 1980). Power, thus,
produces reality, knowledge and truth claims, and even produces
the ways in which ‘truth is made true’.5 “Truth is linked in a circular
relationship with systems of power that produce and sustain it, and
to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A regime of
truth” (Foucault, 1980, p.133). This goes beyond ‘ideology’, ‘subjective opinions’ and also beyond falsely constructed facts. As Latour
(1993) argued, facts are fabricated, but this does not make them
less real.
Foucault related this to the political-strategic nature of truth
production: “It is the production of effective instruments for the
formation and accumulation of knowledge – methods of observation, techniques of registration, procedures for investigation and
research, apparatuses of control” (Foucault, 1980, p. 102). Thus,
in endless ‘degrees of validity’, valid water knowledge (a full
5
In our social-constructivist understanding, reality can be known in diverse ways,
so it produces situated truths (as well as non-truths), according to one’s position in
‘networks’. Foucault (1980, p. 133) argued in this regard that truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution,
circulation, and operation of a statement.
18
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
range: efficient water use, effective infrastructure, productive irrigation systems, rational water rights, equitable water allocation,
best watering practices, democratic water governance, sustainable
water development, eco-efficient large-scale irrigation, modern
water users) is objectified and judged according to its deviation
from the standard. This way, truth and knowledge claims have
the appearance of being entirely a-political, as are the agents and
relationships that set the standards.
As a logical consequence, beyond the question of how ‘true’
water statements are and how ‘valid’ water knowledge and science are when placed in local contexts, this brings questions to the
fore of how these statements and knowledge claims are produced;
how rules are established to distinguish between true and non-true
water knowledge; how they are linked to the power relationships
that sustain them; and obviously, what the relation is of ‘Us’ to
‘Others’ and to ourselves (how are ‘we’ formed to judge and consider certain water control and rights practices to be ‘best’ or ‘true’
and others ‘in-efficient’ or ‘false’). Unlike an objectivistic, scientific
quest in the name of truth, there is a politics of truth, a battle over
truth. In the field of water control, scientific research and policymaking, these battles produce permanent, clear results in terms
of separating forms of water knowledge and rights that are legitimate from those that are illegitimate (cf. Bourdieu, 1977; Foucault,
1980, 1995; Boelens, 2008, 2009). Truth claims are used politically,
but also work unconsciously. Certain groups, such as experts with
university degrees, are widely considered to have the authority to
make truth claims.
2.2. The dominant paradigms of water engineers and water
economists
As in the case of Peru, policy makers in many countries are
concerned with increasing water use efficiency. Government policies and international donors promote programs to increase water
application efficiencies in irrigation systems by lining canals,
building reservoirs, converting to sprinkler and drip irrigation
technology and improve scheduling and surface irrigation, or by
introducing market mechanisms to ‘gain efficiency’. However, in
the hands of politicians or policy-makers as much as in the realm
of science, concepts such as irrigation efficiencies, water productivity, or crop water requirements do not exist as neutral concepts,
formulas, or techniques, nor are they empty of social relations. They
form part of and are constructed within particular political arenas,
epistemic fields and scientific disciplines. Just like the water use
technologies and practices they are associated with, they can be
conceptualized as (momentarily) “frozen fragments of human and
social endeavor” (Nobel, 1986, cited in Pfaffenberger, 1988, p. 240).
Both their construction as tools of analysis and their application
in water societies have material and discursive impact on these
societies: as techniques endowed with strong power-knowledge
(Foucault, 1995[1975]) they shape and claim truth, steer social
behavior and give normative meaning to particular water practices of particular water user groups. Irrigation efficiency or water
productivity concepts, measurements and claims are not just relations between things but among people, and also go beyond their
supposed use as practical tools for understanding water processes
and realities. Their construction and objectification in mainstream
policies, accepted scientific disciplines and expert-based water
development converts water use and allocation efficiencies into
neutral facts that have sufficient discursive force to conceal the
fact that they were socially created – convincing not only the
actors who have to apply these concepts but also the creators
themselves.
Embedded in engineers’, economists’ and/or policy-makers’ and
politicians’ worldviews, the process of naturalizing such ‘facts’
keeps the social and power relations invisible that have shaped
the birth and conceptualization of these ‘tools’ and in which
their strategic application is crucially grounded (Boelens, 2009;
Pfaffenberger, 1988).
2.3. Actual political use of water concepts
Labels of efficiency and inefficiency embody power. Politicians,
extension officers or engineers not only speak with authority to
local water users but their discourses also have the force of (explicit
or implicit) normative judgment. Blaming others for not attaining
the same set of norms is just a step away. Diemers and Slabbers
(1992, p. 7), for example, observed how many project planners
and engineers derided local African, farmer-managed systems categorically as “unscientific and wasteful”. Gelles (2000) reports how
project planners in the Peruvian Majes system blame local farmers
for their lack of water culture and moral backwardness. In many
places around the world, irrigation technological modernization
is equated with material progress and development but also with
moral progress and ethical innovation. Moral right-ness did not
only legitimize ancient colonizers to conquer presumably virgin
continents; in a multitude of far more subtle ways it is also an
important basis for (mostly well-intended) modern water policies
and administrations to colonize so-called ‘un-ruled’ (i.e., unruly)
water societies and territories by means of water control development. In countries such as Peru, we hear in García’s message,
profound destruction of existing arrangements is urgent in order
to build the new political and symbolic order on the modern, uniform, all-including foundations of progress. The casualties of such
water policies and interventions – i.e., existing communities and
water user collectives who are labeled inefficient – show that the
stronger the moral rightness claimed by such policies, the greater
the intervention efforts they legitimize. As Urteaga argues, in the
resulting conflicts, “the Executive Branch usually takes the side of
those sectors who are presumably ‘more efficient’ and who, coincidentally, have greater power” (Urteaga, 2010, p. 8; cf. Guevara, 2010;
Bebbington et al., 2010).
Clearly, the norms and value systems of water use rationality
are based on the worldview and interests of experts who claim
control over water knowledge, and on those of policy-makers
and politicians who strategically use them to expand control over
water users’ societies. A well-known example, from British India, is
the destruction of the traditional tank irrigation systems, which
were replaced by large-scale, modern canal irrigation systems
by the British colonizer, in the name of progress, productivity
and superior, efficient water management. This, however, caused
widespread famine (see Agnihotri, 1996; Agrawal and Narain,
1997).
Constructing and implementing the tools for defining ‘good’,
‘bad’, ‘backward’, ‘sustainable’, ‘efficient’ or ‘optimal’ water allocation and water use, therefore, goes beyond defining relations
among agronomic, economic and infrastructural components
and deploying the right measurement techniques and calculation methods. It involves constructing social alliances and
economic relationships, inventing and enacting particular rights
and legal principles, embedding these concepts and tools in a
norm-providing framework, and creating and renewing powerful
assertions and truth claims. These assertions are powerful since
they have the capacity to legitimize some practices and actions
while delegitimizing actions by others, commonly by presenting
these normative understandings as hard evidence that should lead
to inevitable conclusions and/or policies.
The following three sections deal with the three arenas or realms
outlined above. They cannot be seen as separate, because water
use, efficiencies, and livelihoods at different scales are closely interlinked, and since these concepts are not bound to particular, neat
scales. However, following the scale from a farmer’s plot to global
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
trade serves to illustrate impacts of water policy concepts on social
realties according to different geopolitical arenas.
19
comparing efficiencies among different irrigation systems, ‘benchmarking’ has been used to assess and compare the performance of
irrigation systems (see examples from the FAO (Malano and Burton,
2001) and HR Wallingford (Cornish, 2005)).6
3. The use of technical irrigation efficiency concepts
3.2. Value-loadedness of technical irrigation efficiencies
3.1. Technical irrigation efficiency
Since the 1950s, many studies have emphasized the large proportion of water that is lost from irrigation systems. It is commonly
presented that typical surface irrigation systems have overall efficiencies of less than fifty percent (Bos and Nugteren, 1990; Wolters,
1992; Postel, 1997; Gleick, 2008). Thus, with more efficient use,
water could be ‘freed up’ for other users: to produce more food
or supply water to other sectors. Water policy makers and advisors have implemented many programs to promote technology and
management improvements to increase irrigation efficiencies. As
Howell (2011, p. 281) argues:
“Without appropriate management, irrigated agriculture can be
detrimental to the environment and endanger sustainability.
Irrigated agriculture is facing growing competition for low-cost,
high-quality water. In irrigated agriculture, WUE [water use
efficiency] is broader in scope than most agronomic applications and must be considered on a watershed, basin, irrigation
district, or catchment scale. The main pathways for enhancing
WUE in irrigated agriculture are to increase the output per unit
of water (engineering and agronomic aspects), reduce losses of
water to unusable sinks, reduce water degradation (environmental aspects), and reallocate water to higher priority uses
(societal aspects)”.
Commonly proposed solutions comprise concrete lining of
canals, building (night storage) reservoirs and high-tech field application solutions such as sprinkler and drip irrigation. Solutions
also include improved management, such as better scheduling of
irrigation turns and improved furrow irrigation (surge irrigation).
On-demand scheduling with payment per water turn (or per volume applied) to prevent wastage of water is also proposed.
The classical engineering efficiencies have been used since the
1930s to design and operate irrigation systems. Israelsen (1932)
defined irrigation efficiency as the ratio between crop water
requirements (CRW) and the applied water. Later, other authors
(e.g. Bos and Nugteren, 1974; Burt et al., 1997; Jensen, 2007) altered
and refined this original definition. Now technical irrigation efficiency (or classical irrigation efficiency) is commonly defined as
the fraction of the applied water that is ‘beneficially used’. From the
irrigation engineering perspective this ‘beneficial use’ is applying
water to the root zone of the crop. Irrigation engineers distinguish
between conveyance (Ec), distribution (Ed) and application (Ea)
efficiencies.
Technical irrigation efficiencies are mainly used by irrigation
engineers to calculate dimensions for infrastructure, by estimating
water demand and losses. Over-dimensioning of infrastructure to
transport extra water (not used in the irrigation system for crop
production or leaching) entails extra costs in construction, operation (especially when water is pumped) and maintenance.
Application efficiency is also used to develop irrigation field
application techniques (‘surge irrigation’, etc.) and sprinkler and
drip technology. Here, engineers use notions such as application
uniformity, and the adequacy of volume and timing to assess how
well water reaches the root zone (in a timely manner) for crop
production.
In assessment of irrigation schemes, technical irrigation efficiencies give an indication of how much water is ‘lost’ from the
scheme through leakage, seepage, evaporation and runoff. This is
the ‘owner’s’ view of the system. Notwithstanding the problems of
Although irrigation efficiencies have been used widely for many
decades in all parts of the world their value-loadedness and
context-specificity is commonly not questioned in design and management, with the epistemic community convinced that it is just a
technical tool. But, as Pfaffenberger observed, “any behavior that is
technological is also, and at the same time, political, social and symbolic. It has a legal dimension, it has a history, it entails a set of social
relationships and it has a meaning” (1988, p. 244). Here, as a powerful tenet, it is also common to notice planners’ conviction that
these theoretical efficiencies can and should be reached, and that
water users’ own human agency and stubbornness are flaws in the
pattern – their local notions regarding efficiencies do not matter.
We agree with Vincent (1997, p. 11) who states, “users of systems
are usually hidden inside design routines, described crudely through
empirical factors that link them to inefficiencies, losses or uncertainties
in system behavior”.7
Different stakeholders have different interests and different
normative frameworks related to ideas of efficiency, and diverge
on how to evaluate beneficial use. Therefore, efficiency is a relative issue and at the local level it is always embedded in local
livelihood and/or production rationality. Lankford (2006) stresses
the importance of adapting efficiency indicators to the purpose
for using them. Trawick (2001) suggests using indicators based
on the logic of the system as seen from the standpoint of people
using it. A general statement on efficiency assumes that all stakeholders share norms and values concerning system operation and
its aims. However, politicians, public officials, extension officers,
irrigation experts, female farmers and male farmers, etc., will seldom share the same efficiency and productivity norms, because
their objectives regarding water use differ. An example of different
interests and risk perception can be observed in the design of the
small irrigation systems on the in-river island Ile à Morphil in Senegal (Scheer, 1996). Engineers preferred to build pump irrigation
systems on higher well-drained parts, as they expected drainage
problems lower down to interfere with water productivity. Male
farmers preferred the lower parts, difficult to drain, because they
wanted to grow rice and also expected the risks of hampered water
provision to be greater on the higher, sandy soils. Female farmers preferred well-drained lands for vegetable growing and their
smaller plots could be watered by hand if a pump broke down. To
make the divergent norms coincide, engineers exerted strong discursive pressure to persuade water users of the best solutions (in
engineers’ opinion).
The notion of ‘modern water management’ to convince local
users was also applied as a powerful argument in cases reported
from the Office du Niger in Mali. Farmers and managers both
6
However, despite the design and policy emphasis on efficiencies, Vincent and
Halsema (this issue) point out that data on actually measured efficiencies are hardly
used in system operation. This feeds universal assumptions. For example, drip irrigation is promoted as ‘inherently efficient’. But field research (Wolf et al., 1996)
found that the drip irrigation in Jordan, even in engineers’ terms, was less efficient
(56%) than surface irrigation (70%). The main reasons proved to be (1) the drip line
were more than twenty years old and needed replacement, (2) the drip lines were
used in other crops than designed for, (3) the original installations were altered, (4)
much weed growth, and (5) richer farmers (who could afford drip) had better access
to water. Clearly the farmers had different goals than the engineers designing the
drip installations.
7
See Harris (2006) for an example from Turkey and El-Tom and Osman (1995)
for an example from the Gezira system in Sudan.
20
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
wanted to increase agricultural productivity but targeted different
production factors to achieve this. “Whereas farmers try to optimize
both land and labor input in relation to yield, the central management
would like to substitute water by labor as much as possible in order
to enable expansion of the irrigation scheme” (Vandersypen et al.,
2009, p. 167). As often happens, truth claims by higher-ranking
managers were more powerful than those of users – the latter had
to be ‘corrected’.
3.3. From irrigation systems to the watershed
Technical irrigation efficiencies have been developed to design
water conveyance and application at field and irrigation system
level. However, the water wasted from irrigation canals and fields is
often re-used in other places in the watershed. Low technical irrigation efficiencies at field or system level say little about the beneficial
use of applied water at the watershed level. In relation to the latter
aspect, of inter-system or basin sharing of water, several studies
(Seckler, 1996; Burt et al., 1997; Molden et al., 2001; Guillet, 2006;
Lankford, 2006; Jensen, 2007; Perry, 2007) have indeed argued that
much water lost from irrigation systems is not lost: the runoff and
seepage water returns to the surface or aquifer for reuse. This relativizes the need to gain high efficiencies within irrigation systems.
Perry (2007) points out that recommendations to reduce losses
from irrigation systems or increase water uptake by the crops (and
thus make them more efficient) might lead to perverse outcomes.
For example, downstream users that benefit from the return flows
might be faced with reduction of their water supply.
Although the concept of watershed efficiency is useful to remind
us that irrigation schemes form part of a hydrological cycle within
the watershed, in fact, this new paradigm against the use of water
use efficiencies at irrigation system level also tends to be presented
as a universal claim that excludes contextualization. The argument
of efficiency at watershed level is used in comparative studies.8
Methods of performance benchmarking and comparing productivity among river basins use one-dimensional assessment criteria
whereas realities of each basin are diverse and multi-dimensional.
The danger lies in policy recommendations that encourage farmers
to attain the standards set by high efficiency and productivity found
in other basins, while the conditions and criteria are inapplicable
or less applicable to the context of their own basin.
Watersheds often show a particular geographic distribution of
poverty. The spatial distribution of poverty makes it important to
assess who gains water by re-using water lost from the irrigation system. Gender, caste, indigenous populations and other social
divisions may also be geographically distributed. Water uses may
also differ geographically. For example, in the Andean countries,
the poorest population often inhabits the highest regions (Johnson
et al., 2009). In those cases, water lost at high altitudes and recovered at lower altitudes may imply a shift from poorer to richer users.
Here, also, water in the upper basin tends to be used for national
food production and in the lowlands for export production. This
makes basin hydrology profoundly political (Vincent, 2003), as are
irrigation efficiency indicators and goals.
and the economic viability analysis is severely influenced by the
‘necessary’ prediction of highly optimistic figures. They picture
low construction and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, and
exaggerate productive benefits and cost recovery.9 Based on overly
high predictions of irrigation efficiencies, original technical designs
present a future irrigated area that is too optimistic if compared to
available water resources, thus creating water scarcity and ‘poor
irrigation’, especially at the tail-end of the system.10 This presents
a very ‘positive’ cost-per-hectare ratio. Reality-based, critical analysis by implementing agencies, which from the outset could show
that actual system performance would not (economically) justify
most such projects, are not in the interest of implementing institutions (see, for examples, Moore, 1989; Diemers and Slabbers, 1992;
Vincent, 1997; Boelens and Dávila, 1998; Hendriks, 2002; Hussain,
2004).
Therefore, in the practice of project planning, whenever possible, costs are charged to the non-mercantile community sphere
(e.g., free household and community labor assumptions) and results
are projected towards the mercantile sphere. Thus farmers pay the
extra costs involved with extra family labor (often women, see
Zwarteveen and Meinzen-Dick, 2001) to make projects viable and
bankable (this practice was called ‘structural deceit’ by Hendriks
(2002, p. 59)). It also means that project activities and evaluations
are directed completely towards ‘achievements’ in the mercantile sphere, ignoring the non-mercantile (family and community)
sphere (see Boelens, 2008) which is often the foundation of reproduction in farmer-managed systems. When projects fail to live up
to their expectations, i.e., to reach the high commercial output
and irrigation command area figures that were planned, the culprits are easily found: the ‘backward’ peasants who do not want to
change their ‘inefficient irrigation technologies’, farming styles, and
home consumption or mixed cropping patterns. As Guillet 1992, p.
45) writes for Peru, government officials blamed the local farmers
for their inefficiency and the State enacted “a corpus of regulations
to more efficiently manage water resources”. Or, as Gelles (2000, p.
133) reports, “one of the State’s major objectives was to ‘rationalize’ irrigation use in the highland communities; that is, to strip off
‘inefficient’ practices’. Nearly all projects that we have analyzed in
our earlier work, such as Licto, Patococha, Chambo, in Ecuador,
and Majes, Río Cachi, and Chancay-Lambayeque in Peru, respond
to this pattern. Moreover, the very acceptance and internalization
of such negative water user images (traditional versus modern), as
if they were truthful accounts, generates a users’ self-deceit – since
the expert-defined efficiencies would ‘characterize modern farmers’. Consequently, users may tend not to blame the interventionist
rationality (with their too optimistic project efficiency and productivity proposals) but themselves. This way, external non-truths may
be structurally incorporated into local practices of self-blaming
(see, e.g., the cases of Licto analyzed by Boelens, 2008, and Majes
by Gelles, 2000).
As we have explained above, whenever water users do accept
the standards of ‘modern, rational, efficient, orderly water management’ they come to participate in a rationality system that evaluates
3.4. The use of irrigation efficiencies in project design
Irrigation efficiencies used by design engineers have important consequences for the users of irrigation systems. Since water
development agencies know that only ‘profitable projects’ are to
receive funds, as Moore (1989) and Hussain (2004) observed, irrigation investment programs are often pushed beyond their limits
8
See, e.g., Harrington et al. (2009); and the basin-level water accounting method
introduced by Molden et al. (2001).
9
To recover investments and O&M costs, most irrigation projects plan an almost
radical transformation towards commodity-based (re)production, not just in their
economic plans but also and especially in their technical designs. The devices, distribution mode, cropping patterns, pesticides, fertilizers, labor organization, etc., all
tend toward a future commodity production process, with respect to both inputs
and outputs (Diemers and Slabbers, 1992; Gelles, 2000; Boelens, 2008).
10
Most designs lack attention to tertiary block development, funds for interactive
capacity-building and organization-strengthening – which would increase ‘costs
per hectare’. The assumption prevails that farmers themselves will massively buy
modern water application techniques and change to economically high-yielding
market crops – which would increase the system’s economic viability (Hendriks,
2002; Boelens and Zwarteveen, 2005).
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
and judges them according to their correspondence with or deviation from a set of standards. These standards often expropriate
agency and annihilate local norms. As Foucault argued, such norms
impose homogeneity and at the same time individualize: they compare, categorize, hierarchize and correct people according to the
gaps that they show when measured against the norm. Categorized
by a satisfactory-unsatisfactory dichotomy, they are the material
for self-correction to not just diminish the aberrant behavior but
also produce the very water user him or herself as an ‘efficient,
responsible and modern irrigator’.
3.5. Examples from the Andes and Spain of interventions in
‘traditional’ irrigation systems
When Andean water user groups in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia
develop their distribution systems, they do go beyond considering
just physical, agroproductive and economic water use efficiencies.
Water has always played a far more ample role than only ‘helping make plants grow efficiently’. First, their water practices must
necessarily take into account the irrigation water’s social efficiency
(Boelens and Dávila, 1998). In many communities, irrigation water
is not only the ‘fuel for the productive motor’ but also works as
the ‘oil lubricating the engine of social relationships’. For example, in situations with heavy work overburden, or in zones with
many non-agrarian livelihood activities aside from irrigation, ‘hurried’ watering (often with large flows and short turns), accepting
significant ‘wastage’, may be the solution in order to gain efficiency in other areas of families’ economies. Second, but equally
important: to optimize the transparency of water distribution, to
simplify the distribution schedules and/or improve the feasibility of
social control, communities often consciously grant lower priority
to technical efficiency than would theoretically be possible. Third,
besides forbidden robbery of water, some Andean systems also
have permissible water theft, which seems to contradict rational
water distribution, but which reflects, rather, water’s social function. Fourth, the sequence of irrigation turns in certain distribution
arrangements is often based not only on technical considerations,
since the water’s social function may be overriding, expressed in
criteria such as ‘first the elderly’ (social security and respect), ‘certain crops first’ (productive and food security) or the turn schedule
is made compatible with the ritual functions that must be performed along with irrigating. Fifth, and above all, more than just
the criterion of crop water requirements, the way in which water
is distributed in most systems is strongly rooted in the need to
guarantee that all families have access to a basic amount of water.
Securing collective and household subsistence often prevails over
allocating water to a ‘higher value’.
Interventions in existing irrigation systems to improve efficiencies can have positive and negative consequences for local
livelihoods. However, if they narrowly follow established experts’
concepts without taking into account local rationales and contexts, changes in the water distribution often severely affect rights
definitions, equity considerations and mobilization for collective
maintenance activities. Collective watering schedules and shared
action are disrupted, for example, when introducing pressurized
irrigation techniques on an individual farmer basis in surface systems. These users require longer turns (and/or shorter intervals)
and smaller flows, upsetting the existing distribution patterns,
often leading also to increased water losses from the canals because
of water theft – as happened in the Pungales irrigation system
in Ecuador where sprinklers were introduced: the existing water
distributing schedule, based on surface irrigation, was entirely
muddled and puzzled when individual farmers implemented sprinkler irrigation and claimed nearly permanent water turns with a
different flow regime in order to get sufficient water on their fields.
21
The promotion and introduction of individual storage reservoirs
to augment efficiencies (and to solve the above problem of individual farmers’ differential water scheduling needs when applying
sprinklers in an overall surface irrigation system) often has a similar
inefficiency effect: in the Patococha system, Ecuador, those users
who invested in constructing family reservoirs later also claimed
the rights to fill their reservoirs in times of scarcity. This way, water
accumulated in those places of the system where farmers had larger
economic capacities, and existing practices of ‘scarcity distribution
among all’ were increasingly frustrated. In Bolivia, Gutiérrez (2010)
has documented similar experiences after the promotion and introduction of individual atajados (family reservoirs) in collective water
use systems.
In the well-known Acequia Real in Valencia, Spain, most farmers
are hesitant to change from their centuries-old surface irrigation
practices to drip irrigation, but they are told that modernity allows
no other choice, and it is ‘good for everyone’. Others do internalize
the feeling that they need to ‘progress’. But even though the system
was to be ‘modern’ by the year of 2007, these days only 600 of the
25,000 ha have been equipped with pressurized drip installations.
These sectors are fully computerized, whereby the 150 ha units are
centrally operated from the office and water scheduling and distribution, including automated fertilizer application for the whole
unit, is a high-tech matter to be managed by the new system’s
experts only. The tasks of ‘guardas’ and ‘acequeros’ (farmer water
distributors) were transformed into supporting the engineers and
managers during the transformation process, and most have lost
their jobs already. Collective actions11 to organize maintenance
and water shift distribution are disappearing since watering the
fields is now an entirely individual (automated) affair and system
control and upkeep are totally dependent upon expert knowledge
and action. As the Acequero Mayor explains, “actually, we don’t
know anymore how the water reaches the field, so the celador
and acequeros are not necessary anymore” (personal communication, 8 June 2010). At the same time, those farmers who want to
start or continue practicing agroecological farming in the modernized units are frustrated since they are forced to apply chemicals:
automated fertilization necessarily takes place through the pressurized water system and not accepting fertilizers therefore means
not accepting water at all. During the last few years, most irrigation system debates, financial resources, organizational capacities,
training efforts, technical service, etc., have been dedicated to the
few hectares where ‘the toys for the boys’ have been installed, to
the detriment of, for example, improving existing surface irrigation
practices and collective action. Meanwhile, the experts’ ‘efficiency
gain’ argument has not materialized – which also makes it clear
that the discursive power of the modern efficiency paradigm is not
deterministic and unilateral but faces resistance by local user collectives: the water users’ organization is determined not to accept a
new water rights regime12 with lower, seasonal volumes after system conversion to drip irrigation, since they argue that the current
water rights claims have a historical foundation which, moreover,
is necessary to secure the system’s viability in the future and, most
importantly, the ‘surplus’ water is not ‘lost’ but feeds the down-
11
We refer to collective action as the activities that the water users decide upon
and carry out together.
12
In order to improve water use efficiency, Spanish water policy has changed its
allocation principles, from flows that used to be allocated to each water use system
(in m3 s−1 or L s−1 ) to the current, yearly established volumes per system. In many
cases, however, irrigators complain that this technical argument has been used to
reduce their flows and transfer rural water to urban uses in cities, industry and
tourism, since the volumes allocated in drought years tend to become the nominal
volumes: because the argument goes that ‘farmers show that they can manage with
these reduced volumes’ (field work by authors, Jucar Basin, June 2010).
22
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
stream Albufera wetlands – an ecological and cultural heritage that
depends upon these water leakages.
3.6. Expert-defined efficiencies: the example of water allocation
planning in Peru
In many countries, official water allocation is based on both the
idea of optimizing irrigation efficiencies and water productivity and
on the tenet that only highly qualified engineers (employed by the
central government) can establish the ways in which corresponding rights and distribution schedules have to be designed. In Peru,
for example, the technical administration (Autoridad Local del Agua)
of each Irrigation District is responsible for setting up each year’s
Plan de Cultivo y Riego (PCR, Cropping Pattern and Irrigation Plan),
based on experts’ technical, legal and administrative definitions.
The Plan fragments irrigation knowledge and practice into detailed,
apparently unconnected parts, to be evaluated by disciplinary specialists, who later have to blend them back into a ‘planned system’.
The planning is done by different specialists: economists (crops that
are allowed), agronomists (crop water requirements, water shifts
and start of the irrigation season), hydrologists (water availability expectations in the river and reservoir and also the start of the
irrigation season), and irrigation engineers (allowed irrigated areas
per crop, and water distribution). The type of knowledge and procedures required for this mean that they are the only ones who can
make the parts into a meaningful whole.
This annual allocation and scheduling plan requires precise
agro-engineering planning, which involves detailed calculations
of each crop’s water requirements, according to the cropping
phase, the soil properties, each month’s rainfall and climate figures,
etc. The PCR planning technique is based on standards developed in Western research centers and commercial enterprises,
and basically applicable to large-scale commercial plantations. The
norms share the same rationale of water requirements, irrigation efficiency, allocation rules, role and function of measurement
structures, water application methods, mono-cropping of (market)
crops, organizational structures, and so on. Engineers’ assumptions, risks assessments and predictions are fundamental. While
it is already very difficult to establish this Plan in large-scale
mono-cropping irrigation systems in the coastal area (where a few
systems, with centralized control and strong engineering support,
have been able to apply it to some extent), this way of defining
and implementing water rights and distribution is impossible to
implement in the Andean systems. Here, even in a sole community
or canal sector we find an enormous diversity of micro-climates,
soils, mixed cropping patterns, and very erratic rainfall figures,
which make the exercise technically infeasible. The diversity of
ecological zones within such an irrigation system and the corresponding diversified production strategies and hydraulic cultures
show the intrinsic absurdity of the technocratic policy and legislative recipe. As Trawick (2003a,b), Boelens (2009), Hendriks (2010)
and Guevara (2010) show, user communities in the Andes, therefore, have no choice but to challenge the engineering approach
and arrange water and cropping schedules according to their own
practices, as they always have done. At the same time they challenge the assumption that water rights definition is too difficult for
local farmers to handle, and that water allocation is too complex
for indigenous and peasant authorities to implement. For this, it
is very uncommon to find systems in the Peruvian Andes that are
based on the rationality of the ‘Plan de Cultivo y Riego’ (Trawick,
2003a; Boelens, 2008; Hendriks, 2010).
Nevertheless, most new legislative and intervention proposals in Peru contain the same ‘error’: both the official policy plans
and the ‘counter proposals’ by national irrigator federations overlook the engineering bias and the inadequacy of the technocratic
model. Apparently, even in such a crucial issue – the heart of water
rights definition, allocation and distribution – it does not matter if
‘things do not and cannot work’ in the way they were planned. The
discourse of rationality and efficiency behind these water rights
and distribution notions can be discredited in actual practice, but
the model remains firmly in place. What is more, whenever State
expert institutions are absent in the remote Andean areas, NGOs
often try to ‘participatorily convince’ the Andean communities of
the need to accept these expert’s plans in order to ‘progress’ and
become ‘efficient farmers’. Once this need is accepted, new, manifold needs-to-be-solved-by-experts-only emerge among the water
users in order to set up and implement the imaginary Plan de Cultivo
y Riego. User communities are left behind, stigmatized as ‘backward
peasants in dear need of training and education’.
4. The use of economic water allocation efficiency concepts
4.1. Government policies promoting free market mechanisms for
water allocation
During the last few decades there has been a shift from direct
(central) State control towards more de-concentrated and decentralized control and water-pricing principles of water allocation.
Since the 1992 Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development regarding ‘recognition of water as an economic good’ the
idea of economic water allocation efficiency has gained importance in government policies (see e.g., Grimble, 1999; Rosegrant
and Binswanger, 2004; Tsur et al., 2004). Johansson et al. (2002, p.
192) state (note the universal claims): “it is agreed that if water users
pay the marginal cost and scarcity rent of supplying that water, significant movements towards more efficient water use would be made,
(. . .) Many argue that water markets are a useful means to improve
efficiency when perfect information is not available to policymakers”.
Some countries, like Chile and Peru, have introduced national
water laws based on water use efficiency and marketing of water
use rights. The general idea is that water should be bought by the
‘most efficient user’ who has a comparative and competitive advantage over other users because of higher water productivity.
As we have shown elsewhere (e.g., Boelens and Zwarteveen,
2005; Achterhuis et al., 2010), many case studies have produced a
body of evidence that raises important doubts about whether these
claims are indeed realized, or whether they are even realistic (for
a case of problems with water pricing in China, see Webber et al.,
2008). For example, Hendriks (1998) shows how water distribution, water use efficiency and agricultural productivity in several
Chilean irrigation systems is worsening instead of improving after
(and because of) water rights privatization and market allocation. Trawick (2003a) also describes the causal link between rights
privatization and marketization in the decline of water use efficiency and productivity in irrigation systems in Peru. Bakker (2010)
provides elaborate evidence from the drinking water sector in various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America where
market allocation resulted in lower rather than higher water use
efficiencies.13
13
Economic theory often not does go along with field practices. Water pricing is
an example. Pricing of water per used volume or irrigation turn would provide an
incentive for water users to conserve water, and thus increase water use efficiencies
(Tsur et al., 2004). However, even in economic rationality, over-irrigation will only
be prevented if unit prices are sufficiently high to provide an incentive to invest the
time and effort to improve irrigation application. Price elasticity of irrigation water
is quite near zero as farmers will not take the risk of losing their crop because of
lack of water. For example, Cornish et al. (2004) found that irrigation fees need to
be 10–20 times higher than prices needed for full cost recovery. Therefore, rather
than price mechanisms, in most systems quota-based systems are in place to reduce
over-irrigation (Molle, 2009).
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
Many policies that aimed to increase agricultural production
by re-allocating water by market mechanisms within irrigation
systems or at a national level have failed or negatively affected
the water and food security of marginalized groups (Boelens and
Zwarteveen, 2005; Budds, 2010). Moreover, economic criteria do
not provide the sole or principal arguments for evaluating water’s
usefulness. As Trottier (2008, p. 206; cf. Espeland, 1998) argues,
“as water management is intimately linked to livelihoods, it cannot be
an exercise devoted only to maximizing economic efficiency”. Indeed,
applying and promoting “a narrow, economic definition of efficiency
constrains scientists to consider only those uses of water made within a
monetized economy, while the insistence on States as the main actors
spelling out the rules concerning water prevents us from perceiving
the myriad of other actors who participate and compete in determining these rules” (Trottier, 2008, p. 206). As Gentes (2006) and
Trottier (2008) argue, the 2003 agreement by the Bolivian Government to sell bulk water (from indigenous territories) to Chile
(for mining extraction purposes) was economically very efficient
in market economy terms, but it benefited the few and posed a
deadly threat to the survival of indigenous communities.
4.2. Chilean water law and communal irrigation systems
In 1981 the Chilean regime introduced a water code based on a
free market for water rights.14 The Chilean Water Code establishes
that when (new) water rights are allocated and not all potential
uses or users can be accommodated, the water should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The expectation is that this will
result in efficient, equitable water allocation, based on the premise
that everybody can join the market. It has become clear in practice that this is not the case. Subsistence production15 largely takes
place ‘outside the market’, which means that the benefits of water
used for this purpose are difficult to calculate in economic terms,
while subsistence farmers are confronted with a new policy that
tends to threaten their water security (Hendriks, 1998; Budds,
2010).
Bauer (1997, 2004), Dourojeanni and Jouravlev (1999) and
Budds (2010) show how the Chilean privatization model in practice
has worked towards monopolization of water rights in the hands
of elites and a few powerful companies, instead of enabling a multitude of competitors to interact in an open market atmosphere.
The effect of privatization has been non-productive speculation in
water rights. There is no necessarily positive correlation between
how much people are willing to pay for water and their eagerness
to use it efficiently (Boelens and Zwarteveen, 2005).
The neoliberal model promotes de-territorialization or delocalization of water rights: water rights should not be linked to the
land, the community or the territory, in order to extend competition and enhance free trade in water rights to the most productive
use (and the highest bidder). Field experiences in, for example, the
Valley of Codpa, demonstrate the intrinsic irrationality of privatization policy: “The Chilean Water Code has no relationship between
water use rights for agricultural uses and land ownership. They are considered as commercial goods that are totally independent from each
other. Within this context, it is not surprising to find quite a disproportional relationship between farmers’ water share property and the
agricultural area they own. A recent study in the Valley of Codpa shows
that water rights range from 200 to 10,000 m3 per hectare per turn.
Farmers at the low end of the range suffer from serious water shortage,
while their neighbors enjoy plentiful irrigation water with no need to
use it carefully. This over-entitlement for some holders reflects rela-
tive irrationality at the system’s level in handling and distributing this
scarcity” (Hendriks, 1998, p. 305).
Next, evidence suggests that de-territorialization of water
resources may pose a threat to tenure security for those systems
and communities that base their rights on socio-territorial claims
and rationality – linking collective water rights to territorial land
rights (Gelles, 2000; Guillet, 1992, 2006; Trawick, 2003b). However,
it is less documented that particularly market-based re-allocation
of water rights at the intra-system level – strongly promoted by
the Chilean neoliberal law and water policies – endangers water
rights security: this process individualizes and disperses water
rights, detaching it from community structures and collective rulemaking. In general, this breaks down collective action for system
operation and maintenance, and in particular it endangers even
more the position of tail-enders and the poorest sectors in times of
water scarcity.
As we have detailed elsewhere, in collectively managed systems in the Andes, peasant and indigenous organizations generally
establish rules about how to deal with such scarcity situations (see
Boelens and Dávila, 1998). In some cases, the collective rules of
the system are more strictly enforced; in others specific emergency rules are activated. These may involve reducing irrigation
time or flow for each family’s field, reducing the area to be
irrigated by everyone, making neighbor-to-neighbor scheduling
sequences stricter, etc. In most systems this ‘scarcity schedule’
is based on careful sequential ordering according to the spatial
location of right-holders’ fields. This prevents repeated soaking of
canals and increased infiltration losses during water conveyance
and distribution. However, neoliberal regulations promoting intrasystem privatization and water rights trade rupture these collective
schedules. Hendriks (1998) examines small-holder communities
in Northern Chile. Here, as a result of introducing marketization (within the system) of individual water rights among users
(who claim to use this water when it is optimal for them) schedules cannot be maintained anymore and fields are now irrigated
non-sequentially in terms of space and time. Consequently, canals
are dried up intermittently and intra-system water losses sharply
increase, undermining the policy model’s efficiency claims. It is
also time-inefficient, since families’ and collectives lose considerable time when water is moved around in the system ‘at random’
(Hendriks, 1998). Castro (2002) describes similar cases, of Aymara
and Atacama communities (with some 20,000 members) using
collective irrigation systems. She explains how towns and mining companies bought water rights from irrigation communities,
likewise making it very difficult to continue operating the irrigation system with little water left in the system. Individual
irrigation frequencies decline, prolonging overall watering intervals and reducing the system’s production capacity. Moreover, as
many cases show, because of individualizing attitudes and private
claims in a formerly collective system, non-sequential or unordered
distribution schedules drastically impede social control to prevent
water stealing.16 As Castro (2002, p. 194) writes: “Villagers who
remember the old system say that ‘nowadays, irrigation is disorderly”’.
5. Efficient water allocation at global level
5.1. The concept of virtual water
Liberation of trade is promoted by economists and development
planners to increase overall economic development (Whaples,
2009; and see for example: World Bank, 2011). International agricultural produce trade is increasing, due to free trade agreements
14
This example is based on Boelens and Zwarteveen (2005).
In Chile 30% of the landholdings are subsistence farm holdings totaling a number
of some 100,000 farm holders (6th National Census by ODEPA in 1997).
23
15
16
See, e.g., Apollin (2002), Boelens (2008), Trawick (2003a,b).
24
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
and foreign capital in search of profit. In 2000, global trade in agricultural products amounted to some 414 billion dollars, but by 2008
increased to some 1059 billion dollars (FAO, 2010, Table C.1.). This
is caused especially by an enormous increase in high-value products, such as flowers and fresh vegetables and fruits. Also, biofuel
exports are projected to increase sharply in this next decade (OECDFAO, 2011). Exported agricultural products represent embedded
water used to produce them (Allan, 1998, 2003). This virtual water
‘flows’ with agricultural and consumer goods exports. Allan (2003)
has shown that virtual water import by Egypt (by importing wheat
from USA and Canada) accounts for an important share of national
food consumption. According to this theory, ‘virtual water’ flows
from ‘water-rich’ countries to a ‘water-poor’ country, reflecting the
relative scarcity of the resource. Hoekstra and Chapagain (2008,
p.138) formulate the neo-liberal assumptions about virtual water
in this way:
“Liberalization of trade seems to offer new opportunities to contribute to a further increase of efficiency in the use of the world’s
water resources.” (emphasis added)
To fully develop the benefits of trade liberalization, water should
be priced to reflect its relative scarcity, including production costs
and external negative impacts to third parties and the environment.
The mainstream economist discourse argues that this ‘full-cost
pricing’ of water would automatically (through the ‘invisible hand’)
make virtual water contribute to efficiency, productivity and even
fairness of production and consumption: “Such a protocol would also
contribute to fairness, by making producers and consumers pay for
their contribution to the depletion and pollution of water.” (Hoekstra
and Chapagain, 2008, p.142, emphasis added)
The ideas of allocation efficiencies at a global level are presented
as ‘neutral’ concepts. However, as we explain below, poor and vulnerable groups may be severely affected by international food and
agricultural commodity trade and policies based on global, ‘virtual
water allocation’.
5.2. Social realities affected by global trade in agricultural
products
Virtual water efficiency discourse holds as a general assumption that, through global trade liberalization, ‘virtual water flows
from water-rich to water-poor areas’. This, however, is not correct
in many cases. Water-poor countries such as India (with a 50% supply deficit by 2030, estimated by McKinsey (2009)), China (with
a 25% supply deficit estimated by McKinsey (2009)), Kazakhstan,
Australia and Tanzania are net exporters of virtual water. Waterrich countries such as the Netherlands, UK and Switzerland are net
importers of virtual water. Ramírez-Vallejo and Rogers (2010) show
that the NAFTA agreement between Mexico and USA led to virtual water flow from dry areas in Mexico to the USA. De Fraiture
et al. (2004) found that international trade in cereals did not save
water. Verma et al. (2009) found that relative dry states in India
were net exporters of virtual water to relatively water-rich states
in India. Despite their internal inconsistencies, even when measured against their own claims, the virtual water efficiency/trade
liberalization discourse continues to be a powerful driver behind
global water policies. Alternative narratives that challenge the virtual water efficiency and fairness claims have great difficulties
to get a hearing, often because these voices have less economic
and political power. Asparagus and grapes are exported by largescale agribusiness enterprises from the extremely dry coast of Peru,
depriving local communities of water and income (Progressio et al.,
2010). Flower production for USA and Europe in vulnerable areas
such as Lake Naivacha in Kenya and the Andean mountains of
Colombia and Ecuador not only affects the quantity and quality of
local community water sources, it also absorbs the local labor force
and reinforces locally held gender-inequalities (Acción Ecológica,
2000; Bee, 2000; Campaña, 2005; Becht et al., 2005). Cotton produced in and exported from India, Pakistan and China contributes
to the over-exploitation of water sources, affecting local water user
communities (Chapagain et al., 2005). Water extraction from the
Piura river on the dry northern coast of Peru, for export vegetable
production, profoundly affects local peasant communities (Van der
Ploeg, 2008).
The discourse’s assumption that, whenever prices reflect ‘full
costs’, virtual water trade contributes to fairness is equally problematic. Firstly, it is very difficult to set a price on lost access to
water for local communities, ecosystems and future generations.
Secondly, paying for (virtual) water does not make it automatically
fair. Thirdly, in practice transnational companies do not pay compensation costs to the communities whose water they take away or
pollute (Bakker, 2010; Van der Ploeg, 2010; Progressio et al., 2010).
Naturalization of this powerful policy discourse not only negatively affects countries and communities from which water is
taken away. Areas into which virtual water is imported also experience the dangers of virtual water policies’ global water allocation
fairness and efficiency claims (Roth and Warner, 2008). The latter regions and producers become dependent on external water
and water-based products, and their food security becomes intimately tied to the strongly fluctuating prices on the world market.
Also, since they cannot compete on market terms and because
of adverse (import–export) subsidy policies, local production
rationality and livelihood systems tend to be supplanted by outside technological systems and agricultural products. Neglect and
destruction of local systems mean that production and fairness are
threatened.
6. Conclusions
In this paper we have explored the possible effects of naturalizing water efficiency concepts. Concepts and tools such as
irrigation (in)efficiencies, allocation (in)efficiencies, and water
(im)productivity are deployed by scientific and policy-makers’
epistemic communities to address the growing water crisis they
analyze or predict, as neutral facts or problem-solving instruments that would universally extend from (all) local scales to (all)
national and regional scales, up to the global scale. As we have
argued, however, these concepts represent important discursive,
normalizing power often with huge impacts on local water realities. For this reason, it is fundamental to understand not just
the tools and concepts themselves and they ways in which they
are deployed in concrete water societies, but also the social and
power relationships in which they are created and embedded. The
latter mean that scientists and development planners are often
not aware of their value-loadedness, convinced that they provide
objective advice that should be adopted by policy-makers and
politicians.
Efficiency discourses are very strong narratives. As we have
shown, they may affect local communities in different ways: first
because ‘modernization’ policies might deprive local communities
of water rights by deploying the ‘efficiency/inefficiency’ discourse
to allocate water to third (‘modern’) parties. Second, because of
the negative effects of policies and projects that intervene in existing systems to presumably increase efficiencies and productivity
but neglect and undermine local practices and knowledge regarding the optimization of natural resource management according
to local history, context and interests. And thirdly, because of
the internalization of universalistic efficiency concepts and norms,
leading farmers to blame themselves for so-called ‘low performance’ and ‘backward water management’, abandoning their own
water cultures and knowledge systems.
R. Boelens, J. Vos / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 16–26
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out under the umbrella of
the international Justicia Hídrica/Water Justice alliance (www.
justiciahidrica.org). The authors like to thank Samuel DuBois, Bruce
Lankford, Margreet Zwarteveen and the anonymous reviewers for
their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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