Chapter
8:
Case
studies
in
Wadi
Siham
2.
3.
A
hydrological
context
that
forced
farmers
to
collaborate
on
the
infrastructure’s
maintenance;
An
authoritarian,
but
respected
figure
that
coordinated
construction
and
maintenance
works,
and
supervised
the
barriers’
operation.
In
the
past,
Wadi
Siham’s
local
society
was
characterised
by
pastoralists
in
the
upstream
areas
and
agriculturalists
concentrated
specifically
in
the
downstream
locales
of
the
wadi,
where
few
owners
owned
large
plots
of
cereals,
tobacco
and
cotton.
Nowadays,
external
investors,
who
live
outside
the
area,
focus
on
cash
crop
production
in
the
upstream
regions
of
the
wadi.
These
developments
occurred
primarily
because
of
individual
entrepreneurship
and
financial
liquidity
of
the
newcomers.
Yet,
external
factors
were
equally
significant
for
the
shift
of
water
control
to
the
newcomers,
as
they
created
its
enabling
context:
diminishing
floods
downstream,
successive
migration
waves,
a
changing
social,
institutional
and
economic
context,
land
shortage,
conducive
agricultural
policies
that
initiated
credit
and
subsidies
for
groundwater
exploitation,
and
a
national
ban
on
imports.
Without
these
factors,
individual
initiatives
would
not
have
found
the
fertile
space
for
entering
the
wadi,
with
all
of
its
embedded
implications.
8.1.8
Wadi
Siham
Improvement
Project
(WSIP)
According
to
project
reports
of
Wadi
Siham,
the
WSIP
provoked
a
redistribution
of
water
upstream,
where
large-‐land
owners
growing
mangoes
have
access
to
the
water,
whilst
forcing
several
downstream
areas
to
turn
to
rainfed
agriculture.
Additionally,
these
reports
state
that
the
acquiescence
of
governmental
agency
responsible
for
the
new
structures
was
partly
to
blame
for
this
redistribution
of
the
water.
A
generally
held
view
is
that
irrigation
interventions
entail
a
process
that
violently
disrupts
the
“indigenous”,
“egalitarian”,
and
“functioning”
pre-‐intervention
agrarian
equilibriums.
While
the
scope
for
modernisation
of
traditional
spate
irrigation
systems
has
been
critically
discussed
as
a
driver
of
water
reallocation
and
livelihoods
insecurity
(van
Steenbergen
and
Mehari
2008;
van
Steenbergen
et
al.,
2008),
this
dichtomy
does
not
consider
that
within
this
“traditional”
world,
paradigms
of
agricultural
development
alternative
to
the
subsistence
one
may
already
have
existed.
This
is
the
case
of
Wadi
Siham,
where
an
evolving
local
society
played
a
prominent
role
in
shaping
patterns
of
water
control
-‐
technologies
and
access
-‐
around
larger
spate
interventions.
The
WSIP
undeniably
attracted
new
investors
with
the
prospect
of
an
increased
water
supply
upstream
and
certainly
influenced
the
present
water
distribution
patterns
to
the
detriment
of
the
wadi’s
downstream
areas.
However,
already
long
before
the
irrigation
improvement
project,
a
line
of
commercial
transformation
of
agriculture
began,
which
was
paralleled
by
a
water
control
gradually
moving
upstream
and
concentrating
in
the
hands
of
investors
with
a
certain
social
status.
Together
with
this
water
redistribution
in
the
upper
locales
of
our
study
area,
a
social
differentiation
also
occurred.
As
far
as
it
concerns
irrigation
issues
(water
appropriation,
water
distribution,
resource
mobilisation,
and
maintenance),
the
power
of
local
landlords
has
gradually
been
substituted
by
that
of
the
emerging
class
of
external,
commercial
“farmers”,
who
in
turn
benefit
from
TDA
machines
and
support.
Hence,
the
Wadi
Siham
Irrigation
Project
exacerbated,
rather
than
initiated,
a
preferential
water
allocation
in
Barquqa,
to
the
detriment
of
the
rest
of
the
wadi.
8.1.9
Irrigation
Management
Transfer
(IMT)
Irrigation
Management
Transfer
led
to
unintended
consequences.
In
2003,
a
Water
Users’