Este artículo analiza las organizaciones de usuarios de aguas en Chile antes de la emisión de la Ley N° 2.139, de 1908, para determinar cuáles fueron las formas asociativas empleadas por los regantes para organizarse hasta aquel entonces y si estos últimos confirieron atribuciones jurisdiccionales a dichas organizaciones para resolver los conflictos derivados del ejercicio de los derechos de sus asociados.

"This paper explores disparities in local public service provision between decentralized districts in Ghana using district- and household-level data. The empirical results show that districts' geographic locations play a major role in shaping disparities in access to local public services in Ghana. Most importantly, the findings suggest that ethnic diversity has significant negative impact in determining access to local public services, including drinking water. This negative impact is significantly higher in rural areas.

Thai national irrigation systems, serving a large number of small paddy farmers, require water users' organization for effective and sustainable joint management; however, water users' organizations (WUOs) presently cover only 27% of the total irrigation area. This three-year action research investigated the difficulties in organizing water users in the Khlong Thadi Weir System in southern Thailand by immersion into the socio-economic conditions of Muslim farmers in farm turnout No. 4 of the 1L-4R-LMC canal and the conventional on-farm irrigation development there.

Though water rights are at the core of exploiting water resources for irrigation purposes, trivial concerns were offered to the case of Indris irrigation scheme in Toke Kutaye district in West Shewa. The historical background and development of the scheme has been presented in a contentious manner. The augmenting number of competitors too paved the way for conflicts that recurrently erupt out and inevitably lead to a succession of negotiation processes.

Managing drought in agriculture has taken on growing importance as population growth and environmental concerns place increasing pressures on agricultural water use. One alternative for agricultural water resource management in areas of recurrent drought is allocation through market mechanisms. While past research has aimed to explain why farmers are reluctant to participate in already established water markets, this research seeks to identify the appropriate market mechanism given farmers' preexisting attitudes toward water markets.

Up until the end of the 1980s the Peruvian public administration played a central role in irrigation systems throughout the country; this changed in 1989 when operational management of the systems was transferred to water users associations (WUAs). This sudden move required new management capacities for such organizations, demands that were not catered for at the time.

Developing farmers' institutional capacity to defend their water rights is central to sustaining irrigation farming in the UK. Increasing demand and competition for water and the introduction of new water regulations have led many farmers to re-evaluate the security of their water rights.

Institutions do matter in managing water scarcity. Institutional reforms in water sector in recent years have tried to replace the existing command-and-control approach with more innovative and comprehensive marketbased approach. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this paper highlights various issues involved in marketbased institutional reforms in the water sector in various countries.

Tradable water right systems are becoming important ways to achieve distributive efficiency in water resources. In 2002, China's Ministry of Water Resources initiated a pilot project in Zhangye City in Northwest China. The project was designed to establish a new water use rights system with tradable water quotas with the hope of reallocating water resources more efficiently through market-based instruments. However, the tradable water right system is not well enforced.