Improving on-farm water use efficiency: Role of collective action in irrigation management

Do better performing water user associations improve on-farm water management? Using data from Pakistan, we find that better water user association performance in a community is associated with higher water use efficiency of member farmers. Mean on-farm water use efficiency is higher for farmers belonging to communities that more broadly participated in watercourse maintenance, voted to elect their representatives in upper-tier management, participated in water charge collection, and were involved in dispute resolution. While these results provide a sanguine view of the outcome of devolution of irrigation management for water management success, we argue that this may not be interpreted as impacts of water user association performance. Results suggest that underlying community characteristics and/or social interactions may be driving both the performance of water user associations and on-farm water use efficiency.