updated: 12.05.08
pattern
Irrigation Rehabilitation Project

This was the first IFAD-financed operation in Armenia, and it involved the establishment of pilot water management schemes. The objective was to reduce rural poverty, which had increased during the transition from a collective to a market-based economy, by providing support for essential services to improve agricultural production. Sustainability was a guiding principle in building local institutions that would overcome constraints such as lack of irrigation.

The project’s aims were to increase food production and farmers’ incomes through improved water delivery and on-farm water management, and to organize farmers into formal water users’ associations with a proper legal framework and with responsibility and accountability. The project introduced an innovative participatory approach to irrigation water management. By 2000 the IFAD-financed portion of the project was supporting 106 irrigation schemes and had established an equal number of water users’ associations. The project was successful in improving water management and development of users’ associations, and through irrigation it rehabilitated more than twice the amount of land foreseen.

 

Source: IFAD

In this section
Contact information
Mr Henning Pedersen
Country programme manager
IFAD
Via Paolo di Dono, 44
00142 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 0654592635
Fax: +39 0654593635
h.pedersen@ifad.org
Facts and figures

Total cost: US$57.2 million

IFAD loan: US$8.0 million

Cofinancing: World Bank - International Development Association (US$43.0 million)

Duration: 1995-2000

Geographical area: Bagramian, Octemberian, Ashtarak, Nairi and Artashat districts in the Ararat Valley

Directly benefiting: 277,000 households

Status: closed

Partners
  • Government of Armenia
  • World Bank - International Development Association