New water policy, IMT and smallholding irrigation schemes in South Africa : Institutional challenges

Perret Sylvain. 2001. New water policy, IMT and smallholding irrigation schemes in South Africa : Institutional challenges. In : International E-mail Conference on Irrigation Management Transfer, Rome, Italie, from 3 september to 29 october 2001. FAO. s.l. : s.n., 13 p. International E-mail Conference on Irrigation Management Transfer, Rome, Italie, 3 Septembre 2001/29 Octobre 2001.

Résumé : What makes South Africa an interesting case of IMT is that it takes place along with the implementation of a new water policy. Equally challenging is the fact that IMT involves a series of very different situations, from commercial and exporting large-scale irrigation schemes, to smallholding developing, and subsistence-based irrigation schemes. This paper briefly reviews the situation of smallholding irrigation schemes -SIS- in previously disadvantaged rural areas of South Africa It then analyses the implication of the new National Water Act of 1998 on those schemes, with regard to the IMT process. An analysis of water rights related issues is proposed. It highlights a number of contradictions, uncertainties and possible threats which may hinder further development, and sustainable IMT in SIS. Since 1994, the South African Government has undertaken massive reforms aiming at addressing rural poverty and inequalities inherited from the past apartheid regime. Amongst other programmes, it adopted an ambitious new water legislation, which promotes equity, sustainabilitity, representativity and efficiency through water management decentralisation, new local and regional institutions, water users 'registration and licensing, and the emergence of water rights' markets. At the same time, it adopted liberalism as economic and developmental guideline. Direct consequences are: State withdrawal from its former commitments and controls, liberalisation of markets, decentralisation, transfer of competencies towards local management and decision structures. IMT partakes to this process. All this also generates a major dilemma for a government under budget constraints and social pressure, i.e. matching a social, right-based, gap-filling and developmental approach with a productivity, economic efficiency approach. Such an issue is reflected in the tricky circumstances currently facing SIS and the IMT process in South Africa.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : programme d'irrigation, irrigation, gestion des eaux, coût, entretien, législation, groupe d'intérêt

Mots-clés géographiques Agrovoc : Afrique du Sud

Classification Agris : P10 - Ressources en eau et leur gestion
F06 - Irrigation

Auteurs et affiliations

• Perret Sylvain, CIRAD-TERA-ERE (ZAF) ORCID: 0000-0002-8411-3656

Source : Cirad - Agritrop (https://agritrop.cirad.fr/481442/)

Métriques

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