Irrigation in a Changing World
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Over the past six decades, the world’s irrigated area has doubled. Expanded irrigation contributed to the ‘green revolution’ which increased food security and lowered rural poverty.
More recently, however, competition for water has also increased dramatically due to rapid population growth and urbanization.
Changing dietary preferences, driven in large part by growing urban populations, and a global shift to market‐oriented irrigated farming is increasing farmers’ demands for improved irrigation service delivery. These developments are taking place within the context of climate change, which is disrupting rainfall patterns and threatening to turn water into an ever scarcer natural resource.
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The World Bank has responded to the changing context in the irrigation sector by adjusting its lending and strategic focus over the years.
- The Bank and other donors responded to food security concerns in the 1960s and 70s with high levels of investment in large-scale public surface irrigation schemes to support staple crops, which contributed to declines in the real price of food.
- By the early 1980s, rural electrification, private financing, easy access to drilling technology, and inexpensive small pumps led to over extraction and long-term depletion of aquifers, and the need to monitor and regulate groundwater use.
- With the adoption of the Dublin Principles in the1990s and early 2000s, the Bank’s strategic focus shifted from engineering solutions to institutional solutions: delegating on-farm and lower-level canals in surface systems to community organizations and farmer groups.
- In the last two decades, shifting demographics, competing uses for water, and increasing variability in the availability of water attributed to climate change have been driving the response of the World Bank and other donors to the irrigation sector. The World Bank’s 2003 Water Resources Strategy called for Integrated Water Resources Management and building appropriate skills in the World Bank to address those challenges.
Theory of Change
To test the adequacy of the World Bank’s response to past challenges and the evolving context for Irrigation and Development, this evaluation uses a theory of change that combines both traditional and emergent factors that affect the sector.
- Traditional inputs and outputs cover infrastructure development and rehabilitation, and policy and regulation for the irrigation sector.
- Emergent factors include policy and regulation for the urban municipal interface, land tenure, and recently recognized Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), in addition to related policy changes aimed at promoting climate resilient agricultural production, and resilient livelihoods.
In other words, the ‘traditional’ elements focus on the production of the service, whereas the ‘emergent’ elements focus on the outcome of the service for clients and the wider enabling environment, which include global markets for agricultural produce and water resources management among other critical factors.
View the Theory of Change
More about the evaluation methodology
Main Findings
An analysis of Key Performance Indicators for projects approved or closed from the 2009 fiscal year, which run from July 1st to June 30th, to the 2019 fiscal year shows a markedly low emphasis on emergent factors, especially water service delivery, water resources management (WRM), and climate resilience. Key Performance Indicators for outputs, outcomes, and impacts relating to emergent factors regarding water service delivery, WRM, climate resilience, and market linkages occur far less frequently compared with the traditional elements of infrastructure, institutions and capacity building, and agricultural inputs.
The analysis of irrigation projects in a specific country reveals the scope for improving the sequencing and complementarity of the World Bank’s projects, potentially with those of other multilateral and bilateral lenders and donors, to address the theory of change in a country context. The analysis shows two patterns in the World Bank’s country‐ level project portfolios: (i) a proclivity for repeat projects with a marginally expanding set of objectives and components, but with the focus still on infrastructure rehabilitation, and (ii) irrigation projects complemented by other climate change, WRM, or agriculture marketing and livelihood projects, but without apparent coordination between them to achieve development impacts in the irrigation sector.
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