PRP MINUTES October 29, 1998

THIS WEEK

I.- MANAGING COMMON POOL RESOURCES

Common Pool Resources are institutions that are managed by the users themselves. The difference between Public goods and common pool resources is that while the public goods are nonrival in consumption and non-exclusive, the common pool resources can be appropriated and give a reward.

Four cases were analyzed:

Torbel, Switzerland

Torbel is a village of about 600 people. They have five types of communally owned property: The alpine grazing meadows, the forests, the waste lands, the irrigation systems, and the paths and roads connecting privately and communally owned properties. The village statutes are voted on by all citizens and provide the general legal authority. Communal tenure promotes both general access to and optimum production from certain types of resources while enjoining on the entire community the conservation measures necessary to protect these resources from destruction.

Hirano, nagaike, and Yamanoka villages in Japan

The villages are established on steep mountains where many microclimates can be distinguished. Peasants cultivate their own private lands, raising rice, garden vegetables, and horses. The common lands in Japan produce a wide variety of valuable forest products, including timber, thatch for roofing and weaving, animal fodder of various kinds, and decayed plants for fertilizer, firewood, and charcoal.

The long term success of these locally designed rule systems is that it is not necessary for regulation of the commons to be imposed coercively from the outside.

Valencia

Here the basic rules for allocating water are dependent on the decisions made by the officials of the irrigation community concerning three environmental conditions: abundance, seasonal low water, and extraordinary drought. Each farm on a distributory canal receives water in a set rotation order, starting from the head of the canal and culminating in the tail en of the canal.

The basic elements of the turno system are that the order in which irrigators receive water is fixed, and each farmer can decide how much water to take as long as water is no wasted.

Murcia and Orihuela

In here each farmer is assigned a tanda, a fixed time period during which he may withdraw water. The tanda procedure has some advantages over the turno procedure used in Valencia. Each farmer can plan his activities with a greater degree of certainty as to when he will be able to irrigate. On the other hand, the tanda procedure is it self quite rigid.

Alicante

Originally, these time allocations were tied to land ownership. Then righst to withdraw water for fixed time periods were separated from ownership of land, and a market in these rights existed apart from the market for land.

ZANJERA IRRIGATION COMMUNITIES IN THE PHILIPPINES

The technologies used in zanjera systems are relatively crude and labor-intensive. The system was thus developed as a mode of acquiring long-term use rights to land and the water to irrigate it without prior accumulation of monetary assets.

When water is abundant, water flows throughout the entire system, and anyone can irrigate at will. When water is scarce, rotation systems are established among the zanjeras, and within zanjeras among the various distributory canals.

PRINCIPLES ILLUSTRATED BY LONG ENDURING CPR INSTITUTIONS

Other books related:

The evolution of Cooperation

Natural Resource Economics

Kristin gave a brief history about Elephant Butte Irrigation District and she explained its main functions. She found out that the EBID does use ground water to supplement surface water for irrigation. There is no way to meter ground water usage. The farmers can pull whatever they want and will not be charged. The quality of the water is very poor.

The salinity of water is a big issue. Agriculture produces saline return flow into drains and there does not appear to be much ability to change.

She mentioned that the EBID is very supportive of gradual transfer of agricultural to municipal use of water, but it is a choice that the farmers have to do.

There are tax incentives for conservation as well as a preference to conservation being considered beneficial use and allow owner to sell conserved water.

Paula talked about the different topics discussed in the Conference. She gave a summary of the Bureau of Reclamation’s main projects and activities. She talked about the Rio Grande Compact, one important aspect is that nothing should affect obligations of US to Indian Tribes. She also described he Colorado perspective to the Rio Grande Compact.

They shared a list of possible contacts as well as a list of publications on water quality in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

III.- EDITING GUIDELINES FOR THE FINAL PRP

Kristin and Rachel attended the workshop, the principal points of this workshop were:

In order to be able to publish the final paper on time, two drafts will have to be finished by April.

It is very important to have all the bibliographic data of each interview, article, book, etc. used in the elaboration of the final paper. It is recommended to start doing that now.

If the source of information is a webpage, it’s very important to download the first page to have it documented.

IV.-PRP MANAGEMENT