The objective of the
pilot was to assess
the system’s technical
performance and
economic viability as
well as the effectiveness
of community-based
management.
IWMI pilot, involves the use of deeper
boreholes to provide larger and more
reliable supplies of groundwater.
This offers farmers the possibility of
expanding irrigated crop production
during the dry season.
Though common elsewhere in
Asia, this option has not yet caught
on in Laos. It therefore came as no
surprise that participation in the pilot
was quite modest. Farmers were wary
of possible risks related to the costs
of the new irrigation system. To allay
these fears, the project subsidised
the cost of energy for pumping water
An Ekxang villager at the trial site for the International Water Management Institute's project
for the sustainable use of groundwater as a supplement to primarily rainfed agriculture.
innovations
and making drought more common
and severe.
To help find a new way forward,
researchers with the International
Water Management Institute (IWMI)
carried out a two-year pilot study of
groundwater irrigation in Ekxang,
with support from the Australian
Centre for International Agricultural
Development (ACIAR). Conducted in
collaboration with Japan’s Institute
for Global Environmental Strategies
(IGES) and the Department of
Irrigation, Ministry of Agriculture and
Forestry (MAF), Laos, the research
contributed to the CGIAR Research
Program on Water, Land and
Ecosystems (WLE). The results are
reported in IWMI Working Paper 183:
Community-managed groundwater
irrigation on the Vientiane Plain of
Lao PDR: planning, implementation
and findings from a pilot trial.
In a first for Laos, the pilot centred
on
a
participatory
approach,
in which community members
contributed to the construction and
took responsibility for managing the
groundwater irrigation system. The
objective of the pilot was to assess
the system’s technical performance
and economic viability as well as the
effectiveness of community-based
management.
Farmers at Ekxang typically irrigate
crops with water from shallow wells,
withdrawing it by means of buckets
or pumps. In addition, they bring some
surface water via a small canal from a
neighbouring village. But by March or
April, the canal and many wells have
dried out, constraining the production
of cash crops or a second rice crop.
Another option, and the focus of the
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Water Sewage & Effluent May/June 2019
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