Monitoring and comparison of performance on French community irrigation schemes: review of achievements coordinated by AFEID between 2003 and 2005

✍ Scribed by Marc Polge; Alain Villocel; François Onimus

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 123 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1531-0353
• DOI: 10.1002/ird.248

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In the frame of the World Bank‐coordinated International Irrigation Benchmarking Programme, AFEID (Association Française pour l'Etude de l'Irrigation et du Drainage) has taken up the task of reviewing French experience and the methods used to monitor, examine/interpret, compare and improve performance on French irrigation schemes. The review was described in a publication for the 2003 ICID conference in Montpellier. Preparatory work at the time provided evidence that performance analysis and comparison activities existed and were already being used by the managers of community irrigation schemes in many different shapes and forms.

AFEID later organised technical talks in May 2004 so that the managing entities involved in the comparison activities could present their achievements and discuss them. The talks confirmed the existence of a definite go‐ahead attitude out in the field on some very different issues: technical assets, human assets, administrative and legal assets, communication and financial management to minimize pricing changes in the agricultural world. However, at the end of the day, the debate stressed that concern about external threats (legislation, regulations, urban development, etc.) was largely predominant and that those threats have imposed themselves as the main factors that encourage network managers to consult one another to determine the actions to be taken. Suggestions to work towards a more structured, wider‐shared comparative analysis were somewhat restricted.

Nevertheless, the talks did enable the establishment of conditions in which the benchmarking approach can be pursued in France in new terms: “How to facilitate the development of ongoing activities so that the structures involved can consolidate their scope of comparison and monitor their performance improvement actions over time.”

Considering the achievements during these first two years of work, AFEID is thinking of furthering the subject along two additional lines of action:

Encouraging the formation of benchmarking groups composed of community irrigation scheme managers wishing to improve the performance of their systems through joint action to analyse performance;

Furthering the study within the AFEID Benchmarking Working Group in order to accompany previous initiatives, to improve its perception of the situation according to the lessons learnt from their exchanges, to facilitate dissemination and to make use of all the feedback and work at national and international level. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.