Decisions on water management should be based on unbiased and reliable data and information. These data and information are to be provided from monitoring systems that comprise monitoring sites, systems of indicators and monitoring tools.

The monitoring tools (technology, approaches, models, technique, devices, mechanisms, methodologies, principles,…) include technical, institutional, legal and other tools that facilitate monitoring.

1. Technical tools
   • Gauging posts for water record keeping.
   • Observation wells.
   • Measurement devices (current meters, conductivity meters, …).
   • Devices for water table measurement and sampling from observation wells.
   • Portable devices for land reclamation field offices (LRFO) to assess conditions of irrigated land.
   • Models.
   • Software.
   • Systems of indicators.
   • Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).
   • Information systems (IS):
     • Bibliographic information systems.
     • Geographic information systems (GIS).
   • RS technologies for assessment of evapotranspiration (to get real-time data on water use, monitor and forecast water level in rivers and identify new drinking water sources (in combination with a network of semantic sensors and GIS)).
2. Cognitive tools
   • Internet-portals with regularly updated water information.
   • Newsletters.
   • Methodologies, manuals, rules (e.g. “Methodologies and methods for detection of water properties and composition”, …).
   • Knowledge base (KB).
   • Database (DB).
3. Social tools
   • Interviews.
   • Questioning.
   • Testing.
4. Institutional tools
   • Organizations and staff responsible for monitoring (ministries, departments, laboratories, …).
   • System of incentives and rules (requirements for collection, recording keeping, processing, storage, and analysis of data, metrological standards, rules, organization requirements, …).
5. Legal tools: legislative and legal documents that regulate monitoring process.

Author: Mirzaev N.N., SIC ICWC

Institutional and financial aspects of better water record-keeping

Introduction

Since the main water consumer is the irrigated agriculture, water productivity should be improved mainly through better irrigation services. It is well-known from world practice that water pricing is needed for better irrigation services and water conservation.

The theory and practice of water pricing show that effects of the latter are feasible only when fees for irrigation services are linked with an amount of water delivered to users. However, it is difficult to link irrigation service fees with water delivery amount at lower level of water management hierarchy since this requires water record keeping at the boundaries of water users.

Current state of water record keeping at lower water management level

Water record keeping has been and is still relevant at all levels of water management hierarchy, with the poorest chain being the lower level of hierarchy (former “on-farm network”). It is well-known that irrigation network M&O functions, including water record keeping, are under responsibility of WUA at the lower management level. Those functions were fulfilled poorly in Soviet times, and now, for a number of reasons, the quality of M&O has decreased even more.

As usual, WUA cannot efficiently fulfill its functions and, if water is still delivered to farmers’ fields, this is because a part of WUA functions is provided by water-management organizations – ‘top’ – and by water users themselves - ‘down’ – who hire mirabs (irrigators) to deliver water to (more precisely, make water approach) the farm boundaries. Attempts to organize efficient water record keeping have failed for decades since Soviet time (earlier – at the boundary of collective farms (state farms [1]) and now – at the boundary of individual farms).

[1] In Soviet times, water meters were installed at the on-farm network, especially in newly developed land; however, as early as in the 70s, the flumed network of collective farms lacked those water record keeping facilities.

In the context of market relations introduced in the water sector, the so called ‘commercial water record keeping’ at the boundaries of water users (farms, …) is of prior interest as irrigation service fees should be determined on the basis of the recorded water data.

For a number of factors, such as difficulties in measuring varying flow rates, destructed structures, heavy-handled structures, poor knowledge and skills of staff and lack of will from the side of water managers, water record keeping at the lower level of water management hierarchy remains extremely poor. The quality of irrigation services is also very low. Construction, maintenance and operation of water-metering facilities in combination with data collection from these facilities and following data analysis create problems of logistical support. Those affect efficiency of the use of metering facilities.

Water managers take customary and unsuccessful measures for arrangement of water record keeping but the irrigation system at the lower level has still lacked such record keeping. In last decades, the governments in CA and international donors have increased attention to equipping of WUAs, first of all, construction of gauging posts at farm boundaries. WUAs have water receiving and transferring registers; however, regular water record keeping, as a rule, is absent and even in those WUAs that, as reported, were 100% equipped with gauging stations. As WUA staff says, water is measured only in case of conflicts. The data from the water receiving and transferring registers are also used in case of conflicts. Those data are not used for charging for irrigation services provided by WUA since the fee is hectare-based and not linked to an amount of water delivery. Thus, formally water records are kept but only ‘on paper’. It is clear that such monitoring ‘on paper’ does not show the real state-of-affairs and does not contribute to better water management. The key reason of such situation is that the need for improvement of water delivery services is not supported by willingness (capability) of farmers to contribute their money to such improvement.

The analysis of water record keeping problems mainly addresses the following: availability of gauging posts (GP), including of certified GP; correct functioning of GP; types of GP; equipping with current meters, gauging rods and meter rods, operability of current meters; availability of hydrometry experts (stipulated, actual), level of education of hydrometry experts, training of hydrometry experts, availability of documents that give the right to certificate (calibrate) GP [2]. At the same time, the following aspects usually are not addressed in monitoring and assessment: standard number of hydrometry experts, provision of staff with instructions on water record keeping, and reliability of the recorded water data.

[2] The monitoring data (as of May 2017) show that out of 71435 gauging posts available in Uzbekistan at the lower level of water management 66378 posts (93%) do not have certificates, 20707 posts (29%) need repair and rehabilitation, and 41096 posts (57%) have not passed certification.

Based on the analysis of situation with water record keeping, only the following measures have been recommended for improvement for decades: construction of GP (mainly, at the boundary of water users (farms); repair of GP, current meters; training of hydrometry experts; buying of current meters, meter rods, gauging rods; calibration of GP and current meters, etc. Basically, at best, such measures maintain the current low level of water record keeping but not improve it as those do not address the key aspects of record keeping related to institutional and financial sides.

Besides, it is characteristic that scientists are concerned with the improvement of accuracy of water record keeping only, while practitioners, as a rule, are not interested in the accuracy issue. Whereas validity of recorded water data is not a matter of concern for both scientists and practitioners. Another problem related to water metering facilities is that until now the infrastructure of the former on-farm network have not been transferred to balance sheets of every WUA. Consequently, the budget of such WUAs does not formally contain items for maintenance (repair) of I&D network.

Due to complicated financial situation of WUAs, repair and rehabilitation, let alone construction and reconstruction, are virtually postponed from year to year. As to investments into I&D system of WUA, these are possible if motivation to investing is increased. This, in turn, is related to stronger sense of certainty and protection of water and land rights among farmers. Currently, due to lack of reliable and full information, it is virtually not possible to answer clearly to a number of questions:

• What is the real [3] situation with equipping WUAs with gauging posts at boundaries of farms and when they can be equipped fully with gauging posts?
• Does an increase in the number of gauging posts leads to improvement of water record keeping at farm boundaries?
• What is current and needed financial, technical and staffing capacities of WUAs to ensure complete water record keeping at farm boundaries?

[3] Virtually, due to absence of demand for gauging posts and, consequently, their non-maintenance, existing gauging posts at the boundary of water users have become regularly broken down.

What to do?

Taking into account the above mentioned and given the goal of improving the level of irrigation water delivery services, a need arises to search for other ways of organization of water record keeping [4], while maintaining the value of collected information.

The following points of outlets are considered in terms of water record keeping: 1) record keeping is maintained; 2) passive record keeping, 3) no record keeping. To facilitate the water record keeping process from financial and organizational points of view, two tasks need to be solved:

• Reduce the share of outlets, where record keeping is maintained by decreasing quantity of points to economically viable minimum. Water record keeping should be organized only in those points, where record keeping is really feasible and where water records will be practically used in making decisions and settling accounts between water suppliers and users.
• Increase the share of outlets, where passive water record keeping is maintained.

[4] The case is about ‘commercial’ water record keeping in points, where water is received-transferred between supplier (WUA) and user of services (farm).

Those two tasks can be solved by technical, institutional and financial measures.

Institutional measures

Institutional measures include organizational measures and systems of incentives and rules. Organizational measures are taken to establish organizations in support of implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM) principles (public participation, hydro-geographization, integration, etc.).

Systems of incentives and rules influence on individual behavior by making people to do things that otherwise they won’t do. Systems of incentives have several forms: 1) financial form of incentives (compulsion via penalties, encouragement through money rewards), 2) moral-financial (diploma of the winner of a competition + valuable gift, …), 3) moral (awarding titles, …). System of rules is a combination of rules that allow or limit particular behavior of people involved in water management process. Systems of rules include both informal customs and traditions and formal laws and provisions that form behaviors and facilitate proper conduct.

Incentives. Despite introduction of water charges in a number of countries in Central Asia, commonly no economic incentives for water saving are available for water management organizations (WMO), water user associations (WUA) and water users (farms, etc.):

• WMO and WUA cannot be interested in water saving as fees collected for services of WMO and WUA, in essence, depend on quantity of supplied water: the smaller amount of water is supplied, the lower will be the irrigation service fees (ISF).
• Farmer is not interested in water saving as in general practice fees for water services of WUA are hectare-based, i.e. do not depend on an amount of water received by a particular farm.

Transition to volume-based fees for WUA’s irrigation services

As a rule, most scientists and decision makers agree that for encouragement of better irrigation services, it is necessary to introduce water charging, with charges for irrigation services linked to a volume of water supply. However, the problem is that both practitioners and ideologists believe that, first, water record keeping should be well organized at the boundaries of farms and other water users in order to transfer to volume-based charging.

In essence, WUA’s irrigation services are paid, i.e. water charging is introduced at this level but, as the fees for irrigation services are hectare- rather than volume-based, such water charging does not serve as an incentive. In this context, a question arises: whether it is advisable to link introduction of volume-based payment for irrigation services with the completion of work on construction of gauging posts at farm boundaries?

Given the rates of construction of gauging posts in Uzbekistan in Soviet times and at present, the answer is no since otherwise the introduction of the volume-based payment will be postponed for an indefinite period of time. Suffice to say that 100% equipping of farms with gauging posts have not been achieved even in international project sites despite donors’ support. This is caused by the fact that water users are not going to build gauging posts at their own expense. And, besides construction of a gauging post, a reliable water record keeping has to be organized.

Let assume that all farms would be equipped with gauging posts through donors’ and state investments. Will the water record keeping problem be solved this way? And the answer is no again. Even by building gauging posts to all farms, the problem will not be solved as availability of water metering facilities does not mean that record keeping is made. To this end, a person, who measures (makes observations) is needed. However, even if those two components are available, record keeping will not be automatically made since the former require time, funds and incentives.

Quantity of mirabs (and their share in WUA staff) differ by WUAs and, generally, seems to be not enough. Thus, mirabs have to serve larger areas (consequently, record keeping points). On average, one mirab [5] serves from 557 ha (Namangan province) to 1390 ha (Bukhara province). The maximum area served by mirab is 4268 ha, while the minimum one is 313 ha).

[5] Some WUAs formally have no mirabs in their staff.

In busy days, mirab has to travel over a distance of 20-40 km per working day (and sometimes including night hours [6]). Provided the minimum quantity of outlets from WMO to WUA (and from WUA to farm), such load is unbearable even for experienced and responsible mirab (especially, if he does not get salary). Given that there are too many outlets and that most mirabs are poorly skilled and not enough responsible, it is unfeasible to achieve high-quality water record keeping.

[6] Such busy days occur 8-10 times a month. Night observations of mirabs start since June, when the watering of double-season crops begins.

At best, record keeping is made twice but usually once a day (in the morning). For the same reasons, in most places WUA’s mirabs distribute water at the head of an inter-farm canal and then water is distributed by groups of farmers themselves. This means that WUA does not fulfill (or capable to fulfill) its functions on water supply to farm boundaries to full extent. Thus, WUA cannot ensure regular water record keeping even under current incomplete availability of gauging posts at user boundaries, let alone full equipping with the posts [7].

[7] Record-keeping logs in WUAs in most cases are false stories also because payments for WUA services do not depend on the records in the log. Those records can be used only for setting penalties for above-limit withdrawal of water.

In addition, provision of observations over flow rates does not mean that record keeping is unbiased (deliberate or occasional misrepresentation of data may take place). At present, WUAs and farms are not capable, in organizational and financial terms, of providing quality measurements (observations) of flow rates everywhere since: 1) number of users has increased substantially, 2) most WUAs and farms are financially incapable, 3) there is lack of hydrometry experts (some gauging posts are built incorrectly; old posts become out of operation before new ones are put in operation), 4) users (farmers, etc.) have neither moral, administrative nor material incentives for maintenance of gauging posts, water record keeping and water saving.

It follows from the above mentioned that since it is critical to improve water management and ensure water saving and given that full equipping of farms with gauging posts will not be achieved in the near future (particularly in adyr area, where slopes are large and, consequently, it is very difficult to organize water record keeping there), one should transfer to volume-based payment for irrigation services before farms are 100%-equipped with gauging posts. In addition, the volume of actual water supply to users (farmers) should be determined in two ways: 1) by record keeping (if water metering facilities are available at farm boundaries); and, 2) through calculation (if water metering facilities are not available (or not used) at farm boundaries. Adoption of volume-based payment for irrigation services provided by WUA will encourage better water record keeping inside WUA.

Competition system

One way to motivate for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of water supply and maintenance would be to organize competitions between WUAs and between farms. Competitions imply an unbiased evaluation of quality of water management at lower level, which is impossible under customary attitudes to water record keeping. In Soviet time, “socialist competitions” were widespread but brought discredit upon themselves due to box-ticking approach; however, basically, importance of such method causes no doubts.

Institutional measures. The record keeping points can be reduced to economically sound minimal number in the following ways: 1) hydro-geographization of WUA and farms, 2) consolidation of small WUAs, 3) consolidation of small farms, 4) integration of water users (formation of water user groups (WUG), cooperation of farms).

All those processes take place in a varying degree in practice in CA. For instance, consolidation of farms through their ‘optimization’ is ongoing in Uzbekistan. However, this process is ‘administrative’-based rather than market oriented. Nevertheless, even such process is useful for the improvement of water management in WUA.

Establishment of agricultural cooperatives takes place in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. This process is slow, although its importance (especially from the point of better water management in WUA) is already recognized by users themselves and this is relevant for CA as a whole, including for Uzbekistan. It should be noted that not all users and experts understand the call for cooperation, interpreting it as the revival of Soviet collective farms. Establishment of cooperatives within administrative boundaries is not a major disadvantage as the main function of a cooperative is the joint organization of agricultural process rather than water supply. WUA should not be put against agricultural cooperatives as they have different functions supplementing each other.

Formation of small-scale cooperatives in orchard and vineyard land in Uzbekistan would be an important step integrating users and contributing to higher capacities of WUA for water record keeping. Small-scale cooperatives could be associated members of WUA that, for instance, make centralized payment for WUA’s irrigation services.

Financial measures

Along with institutional measures, financial measures need to be taken to improve water record keeping. Mirabs have very low salary and are poorly equipped with communication facilities and transport. The situation can be solved if financial viability of WUA is improved. In turn, for better financial viability of WUA and for encouragement of water record keeping and water saving [8], it is necessary to introduce (improve) the system of subsidizing farmers’ costs related to irrigation services provided by WUAs [9].

[8] Ideally, for enhancement of financial incentives for water saving, it is necessary to adopt a water right and permit to sell this right. This means that a market of water rights is needed (experience of Australia and other countries). This is ideally. However, at present, for conditions of Central Asia other less radical and effective but still useful measures to encourage water saving and better collection of irrigation service fees must be sought for.

[9] Kazakhstan has a long-term experience of subsidizing farmers relating to irrigation services. Currently, it is a common perception that all types of subsidies should be canceled in view of their inefficiency. However, it seems that the problem is not in the subsidies themselves but in a subsidizing mechanism.

For example, if a farmer fully pays for irrigation services, i.e. fee collection rate P% is 100%, then a share of farmer’s actual costs related to irrigation services (Pf) is to be subsidized by the state in a certain amount (А%). The value А% should be linked with an increase in unit payment for irrigation services on supplying 1 m^{3,/sup> of water so that to encourage farmer to 1) increase costs of operation and maintenance (O&M), including record keeping, and 2) save water.}

where:

f – fact or actual
rg – target year
pg – previous year
K – subsidy coefficient.

A coefficient of subsidy depends on a period of time, for which subsidies are provided. This coefficient is uniformly decreasing each and every year and by the end of the given period approaches zero.

For example, if subsidizing is set for 10 years and the maximum value of the coefficient of subsidy is 2, this coefficient will be equal to 1.9, 1.8, …1.2, 1.1, and 0.0 in subsequent years. Let assume that in 2018

Then

Thus, if a farmer made full payment for irrigation services and А% = 50%, then 50% of farmer’s costs related to payment of irrigation services would be subsidized from a subsidy fund.

Thus, in the next 2019

Subsidies should be given both directly to farmers and to agricultural cooperatives, thus encouraging their formation. Only by cooperating, farmers can improve water record keeping, introduce crop rotation, use water rotation, buy advanced technology, machines, fertilizers, seeds, pay for WUA services, and organize output processing and selling.

Conclusion

• Water record keeping matters were and are still topical at all levels of water management hierarchy, with the lower level as the weakest chain of record keeping (particularly, at user boundaries).
• Attempts to organize efficient water record keeping have failed for decades since Soviet time (earlier – at the boundary of collective farms (state farms) and now – at boundaries of individual farms).
• In the context of market relations introduced in the water sector, the so called ‘commercial water record keeping’ is of prior interest.
• Customary, mainly, technical measures maintain the current low level of water record keeping but not improve it as those do not address the key aspects of record keeping related to institutional and financial sides.
• To facilitate the water record keeping process, the record keeping points should be reduced to economically sound minimal number. Water record keeping should be organized only in those points, where it is really feasible and where water records will be practically used in making decisions and settling accounts between water suppliers and users.
• Since it is critical to improve water management and ensure water saving and given that full equipping of farms with gauging posts will not be achieved in the near future, one should transfer to volume-based payment for irrigation services before farms are 100%-equipped with gauging posts. Only this way the water users will have motivation (incentive) for the improvement of water record keeping.
• It is necessary to reduce points of commercial record keeping to economically sound minimal number through the following institutional measures: hydro-geographization of WUA and farms, consolidation of small WUAs and farms, integration of water users (formation of water user groups (WUG), cooperation of farms).
• Along with institutional measures, financial measures are needed: a wise system of subsidies for coverage of farmers’ costs related to irrigation services should be adopted for a certain period of time.

Author: Mirzaev N.N., SIC ICWC