Over the coming 35 years, agriculture will face an unprecedented confluence of pressures, including a 30 percent increase in the global population, intensifying competition for increasingly scarce land, water and energy resources, and the existential threat of climate change. To provide for a population projected to reach 9.3 billion in 2050 and support changing dietary patterns, estimates are that food production will need to increase from the current 8.4 billion tonnes to almost 13.5 billion tonnes a year.

This study reviewed trends, issues and constraints affecting investments in agricultural water management in Cambodia. Informed by a review of current programs and the literature, workshops were convened in March 2013 to explore four keys areas: investments in irrigation, local institutions for managing irrigation, use of groundwater for irrigation and impacts of intensification on rice-field fisheries. We present some conclusions and unresolved questions here to promote a more broadly based debate around irrigation policy and investment in Cambodia.

India’s 2.25 million ha of village tanks were for centuries loosely managed as multiple use common property resources, including for fishing by artisanal fisher-folk, the lowest in the social hierarchy. During the 1970s and after, the aquaculture productivity revolution created a vibrant new political economy by increasing manyfold the value of fishing rights in these tanks. This productivity boom was expected to improve the lot of poor artisanal fisher communities. But has this happened?