| Abstract | The conventionally institutional system for management of irrigation schemes in Vietnam is the joint management by state owned agency, namely the Irrigation Management Company (IMC) and farmer organization in the form of Agricultural Cooperative (AC), in which IMC is involved in the main physical facilities while AC undertakes the tertiary canals. This administration-based irrigation provision does not function properly in schemes which cover more than one commune, the lowest level in the administrative system. By mid-nineties, new models with increased user participation in the management of inter-commune schemes have been introduced in several provinces. They include a shared management system and a wholly farmers' managed system. The shared management system consists of quasi-state organization, namely the Irrigation Management Board (IMB) and AC. The wholly farmers' managed system consists of a Water User Cooperative (WUC) and AC. The understanding of these various management models demands a framework and an approach that comprehensively and reliably assesses their impact on irrigation and institutional performances. An analytical framework was developed identifying the complex interactions between contextual conditions, including physical, socio-economic conditions, legal and institutional frameworks, with management model and irrigation performance. The analytical framework developed was empirically validated for evaluating three models as discussed above. Three study sites were indicated to represent these three models, including a small storage reservoir and two small secondary canals of a large run of the river scheme. Both primary and secondary sources of information have been used. The primary data were collected through household survey, interview of managers, group discussion and field measurement in the spring crop, a dry season in 2003. A household survey was conducted at 369 farm households, interview was done with 60 managers and discharge measurement was implemented at 90 tertiary turnouts in the study sites. While the information on water-related laws, national policies, provincial regulations and various activities of management entities were collected from published literature and reports. The most remarkable difference in the physical conditions among the study sites is the type of scheme. The physical conditions are favorable for irrigation in the site, which has a storage reservoir compared to other two sites, which are on secondary canals of a run of the river scheme. The socio-economic conditions have been found to be insignificantly different among the study sites, which are favorable for the irrigation provision. With farmer's full involvement in crop cultivation, and with main income from crop production, the farmers are much responsive to optimize management performance. Generally, the legal framework is favorable for the sustainability of all three models since all the management entities are entitled with full legal status to use the water resources for agricultural production. While the authorities in decision making of organizational structure and in terms and conditions for employment of staffs are left to farmers for the farmer organizations, including WUC and AC, these are under partial intervention of the government for the IMB and under total intervention of the government for the IMC. In term of financial dimension, setting irrigation fee and sharing revenue structure among the entities are specified from the provincial government. Overall, the institutional framework is supportive for the viability of Model B and Model C, but it is unsupportive for Model A. There are considerable variations in the attributes of the study models which were identified through analyzing organizational and service arrangements, structures, internal rules and management functions of individual entities. In these management models, the entities undertaking the commune-based facilities are the ACs, in which the important ingredients to achieve effective irrigation service governance, such as accountability, transparency and enforceability already exist. Therefore, the most attention is paid to the attributes of the entities, which are involved in the inter-commune facilities. The farmers' participation in decision making of various management activities in the IMB and WUC is partial and full, respectively. The farmers are not involved in such decision making in the IMC. As a result, IMB and WUC have strong managerial as well as institutional attributes to achieve effective functioning in water distribution, maintenance, financing, conflict resolution, and rule enforcements as compared to the IMC. The irrigation performance of the three study sites was assessed based on a set of multidimensional indicators, which relate to water delivery, agricultural, financial, and economic performances. Based on the results, it is found that the performance differs considerably from one study site to the other. An integration of fuzzy set theory, analytic hierarchy process, and a scaling technique is applied to rank irrigation performance. The performance of the study sites was indicated for the cases of equal and unequal preferences to the management objectives. For the later case, different priorities to the management objectives were determined taking into account the stakeholders' viewpoints. Considering all factors, the sites run by two newly created models perform better relative to the site managed by conventional institutional system. The better performance is partially due to the favorable physical conditions, but mostly is attributed to the efficient institutional arrangements of the management systems. The empirical evidences showed that the analytical framework developed is valid for reliable and comprehensive evaluation of various management models. Hence, it is useful in formulating suitable strategies for management of the irrigation projects. |