Working Paper Series No. 48: Empirical Evidence of Irrigation Management in the Tonle Sap Basin: Issues and ChallengesThe Water Resources Management Research Capacity Development Programme (WRMRCDP) is being implemented by the Natural Resources and Environment Programme (NRE) of the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), with financial support from AusAID, and involvement from collaborating research partners, the University of Sydney (UoS), Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology (MOWRAM), and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
The programme covers five years from July 2006 to June 2011 and focuses on research capacity development and knowledge dissemination, within watershed areas surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake.
The activities implemented during June 2006 – December 2009 were based on the project design document, discussions from WRMRCDP launching workshop and a series of Consultative Committee meetings. Three important issues emerged at the launching workshop: (i) the relevance of scale of irrigation project for appropriate management design and likelihood of success, including financial viability; (ii) water governance of the irrigation schemes; and (iii) catchment governance issues relevant to irrigation water management.
The subsequent activities included a literature review of international, regional and local experience on water resources management in order to canvass existing written work on water resources management with lessons for Cambodia. A social assessment of irrigation in six provinces around the Tonle Sap Lake is also included in the subsequent activities, preceded by a test of research instruments in Kampot province, on whose findings this paper reports. The literature review and social assessment were undertaken to understand catchment hydrology, integrated water resources management (IWRM), and good governance concepts of water resources management from international, regional, and local perspectives in order to frame specific research activities to be undertaken for the remaining period of the programme implementation. The social assessment was designed to build knowledge of water management at existing irrigation schemes, hence to identify various research issues associated with irrigation and watershed management in order to assist in the scoping of key themes for further research and to identify in-depth study sites for this project.