Managing competing water users in a small watershed using decision support tools - a case study of Burkina Faso
The Kou watershed, situated in the Southwestern part of Burkina Faso, has succumbed since a couple of decades in a typical theater play of anarchistic water management. With his 1.800 km², this small watershed holds the second largest city of Burkina Faso (Bobo-Dioulasso), a former State run irrigated rice scheme and several informal agricultural zones. Nevertheless the abundance on water through sources, an exploitable water table and a perennial water course, most water users find themselves regularly faced to water shortages due to an increase in population, low irrigation efficiencies and lack of mutual respect. Since 1987 the political and administrative authorities have been searching, together with the concerned users, ways to address the threats resulting from this situation through the creation of a Local Water Committee (LWC). Despite the Committee's will, it was not before 2005 that the LWC started gaining importance through an impetus given by the State within the framework of a decentralised IWRM policy and the invitation of civil society (amongst others the privately run Water Observatory (WO)) to its activities. At the same moment these institutional and organisational changes took place; on demand of the above stated stakeholders (concerned users, public LWC and private WO) decision support tools have been appropriated to guarantee a decent monitoring of the water resources and their exploitation by agriculture. For small irrigated plots throughout the region, efficient irrigation calendars were being proposed using the FAO AquaCrop model. Another FAO tool, SIMIS, has been put in place for the management of an equitable water distribution for the watersheds irrigation scheme. A GIS, based on remote sensing data retrieval and on terrain gauging sites, has been developed for the monitoring of the available water resources and the expansion of the irrigated zones on a watershed level. The WO, aided by the University of Liege, focused on the development and the application of these tools and the appropriation of their derived results by the concerned users. Throughout the different study stages, participatory meetings were organised. Farmers and state agents were heard, and plans and solutions proposed and discussed. These results are periodically presented to the LWC, enabling them to forecast possible hot spots end granting it a judging base. Once decisions are taken, the administration in charge of water and agriculture surveys their application on the field. It is interesting to see how, once competing structures (public vs. private) reinvented their positions and now successfully collaborate, each having their terrain of expertise. The LWC gained in authority now that it finally has got objective data on the intensification of occupied lands and the use of the water resources. Several decisions have been taken and put in place to protect and conserve the water resources; other management scenarios are momentarily being developed and will be presented to the LWC the months to come. The administration in charge of water and agriculture, with its extended network of field agents, continued to play their role on terrain by guiding and popularizing, but as a public representative it's also the only structure to enforce and maintain the 'law and order' of the retained land and water management policies. The private WO concentrated on counselling based on the results of the decision support tools. Being a free market player, it roamed the country to successfully find other parties interested in the developed techniques. After merely five years, improvements on the management of soil and water resources can be recorded thanks to the integration of decision support tools, the WOs counselling and the Ministries field agents. ; Peer reviewed
