Irrigation Rehabilitation Project

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