Abstract
It is common to define drainage as a means to enhance crop production and increase productivity. In order to meet this objective, drainage systems are designed and managed to maintain favourable moisture and salt conditions in the root zone. Examples from around the world show that drainage has done well to achieve this objective. However, lessons show that many impacts of drainage, positive and negative, have been overlooked, including those on health, built‐up settlements and infrastructure, flood management, groundwater recharge, sanitation, surface and groundwater quality, fisheries and aquatic life, and the environment in general. Thus, the single‐objective approach takes drainage out of the broader context of land and water management and diminishes the overall gains of improved drainage and ignores its full cost. It does also not allow the stakeholders from outside the farming community to be involved in the decision‐making leading to conflict of interests. It also misses an important opportunity for increasing the financing potential.
A better understanding of drainage as a practice for managing the multiple functions of land and water resources is needed in order to achieve an optimal mix of economic and social gains, sustainable natural resources management and a healthy environment. This would only be possible when an interdisciplinary and integrated approach is followed in planning and managing land drainage. The approach, called DRAINFRAME, is a framework for analysis, communication, discussion, and decision‐making by all stakeholders. It looks at the overall social, economic, and environmental productivity of the entire water management system, of which drainage is an integral part. It allows comprehensive analysis and assessment of basin‐wide social and economic impacts of drainage following a participatory planning approach. Although the methodology was developed from a drainage perspective, it is geared towards natural resources management planning in general. It can be equally used in planning irrigation, flood control or watershed management projects. The DRAINFRAME approach was applied in planning some new World Bank‐supported projects in Egypt and Pakistan with the objective of promoting the concept of integrated water resources management. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.