JAWRA Blog

August 2010 Article: Water Governance and Water Use Efficiency: The Five Principles of WUA Management and Performance in China, by Jinxia Wang, Jikun Huang, Lijuan Zhang, Qiuqiong Huang, and Scott Rozelle.

The overall goal of this paper is to better understand the emergence of water user associations (WUAs) in China and assess if they are adhering to the practices spelled out by the Five Principles, a set of recommended practices that are supposed to lead to successful WUA operation. Using four sets of different types of villages to examine implementation and performance, the authors found that World Bank-supported WUA villages (‘‘Bank villages’’) can be thought of as operating mostly according to the Five Principles. For example, the Bank villages were endowed with a more reliable water supply; were set up and were operating with a relatively high degree of farmer participation; and leaders were more consultative and the process more formal.

Good intentions and good theory do not automatically make for a successful development strategy. The “Five Principles” — reliable water supply, legal status and participation, hydrologic boundaries, measured deliveries, equitable charges — are theoretically good ideas. The authors note, however, “Surprisingly, given the high profile that the World Bank’s WUA projects have assumed, in fact, there has never been a rigorous evaluation conducted by an independent research team.” I liked this paper because it holds theoretically good ideas up to the cold hard light of facts. In this case, the authors found applying these principles really did lead to better outcomes. Better late than never, I suppose.

[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own!]