The overall goal of this report is to
give strategic focus to implementation of the agricultural
water management (AWM) components of the corporate
strategies. Its specific objectives are to set out the
changing context of demand and supply for agricultural
water; to identify the policy, institutional, and incentive
reform options that will accelerate productivity
improvements and pro-poor growth; and to articulate

Agricultural water management is a vital
practice in ensuring reduction, and environmental
protection. After decades of successfully expanding
irrigation and improving productivity, farmers and managers
face an emerging crisis in the form of poorly performing
irrigation schemes, slow modernization, declining
investment, constrained water availability, and
environmental degradation. More and better investments in

Many countries are reforming their economies and setting macroeconomic policies that have direct and indirect impact on the performance of the irrigation sector. One reason for the movement toward reform in the water sector across countries is that water resources are increasingly becoming a limiting factor for many human activities. Another reason for increased pressures to address water policy issues is that many countries are in the process of removing barriers to trade, particularly in agricultural commodities.

Reliable supplies of water for
agriculture have helped meet rapidly rising demand for food
in developing countries, making farms more profitable,
reducing poverty, and helping vast regions of the world
develop more dynamic and diversified economies. Can these
successes be sustained with demand for food rising and water
resources waning? That is the challenge now facing policy
makers, planners, and practitioners in agricultural water

The purpose of this study is to update
the review of World Bank experience in Irrigation (IEG 1994)
and to broaden the scope of evaluation to include all water
lending for agricultural development. Since that first
study, the proportion of World Bank lending for agricultural
water management continued to decline, a trend that started
in the late 1970s when the sub-sector received 11 percent of
the lending, is falling to less than 2 percent in 2001-03.

In the past decade, Tanzania has
experienced high economic growth and it is in the global
limelight as a recent success story in Africa. A variety of
factors have contributed to this success, including
liberalized policies and reforms, infusion of external
capital from development partners and the private sector,
debt cancellation, and a strong performance by emerging
sectors such as mining, tourism, and fisheries. Its social

This report analyzes the
government's decision on the outcome of a series of
small power shifts triggered by pro-reform players. Reform
advocates devised them whenever opportunities arose and used
whatever maneuvering room there was to tilt the power
balance between agency and farmers to further the goals of
sustainability and partnership. The shifts were thought out
for their strategic value, but most came without a timeline

The authors describe and analyze management in the Murray-Darling basin of Australia, long regarded as a model for integrated river basin management. This interior basin of over 1 million k

The authors describe and analyze water resources reform and decentralization of river basin management in the state of Ceara, Northeast Brazil, the poorest part of the country. The Jaguaribe river basin is located entirely within the state of Ceara. With a drainage area of 72,560 square kilometers, it covers almost half of the state's territory. The basin has 80 municipalities and more than 2 million people, about half rural and half urban, in primarily small towns, representing about a third of Ceara's population.

The authors review the applications of noncooperative bargaining theory to water related issues-which fall in the category of formal models of negotiation. They aim to identify the conditions under which agreements are likely to emerge and their characteristics, to support policymakers in devising the "rules of the game" that could help obtain a desired result. Despite the fact that allocation of natural resources, especially trans-boundary allocation, has all the characteristics of a negotiation problem, there are not many applications of formal negotiation theory to the issue.

The authors describe and analyze river basin management in the most intensely urbanized and industrialized region of Brazil. The area covered by the Alto Tiete basin is almost coterminous with the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo. With a drainage area of 5,985 square kilometers (2.4 percent of the state's territory), the basin encompasses 35 of the 39 municipalities and 99.5 percent of the population of Greater Sao Paulo. Population growth and urban sprawl in Greater Sao Paulo have been rapid and uncontrolled in recent decades.

In 1993 the Board of the World Bank
endorsed a Water Resources Management Policy Paper (WRMPP).
In that paper, and in this Strategy, water resources
management comprises the institutional framework (legal,
regulatory and organizational roles), management instruments
(regulatory and financial), and the development, maintenance
and operation of infrastructure (including water storage
structures and conveyance, wastewater treatment, and