WATER USERS ASSOCIATIONS IN ARMENIA: CURRENT SITUATION AND FUTURE TRENDS
Experiences of Water Consumers Cooperatives accumulated in Armenia during the past six years have been mixed. Some cooperatives have provided evidence of being capable of organizing themselves and responding to the needs of their members more effectively than any central governmental organization. However, many other aspects are still unresolved. Created in 2001, the State Committee for Water Economy (SCWE) agreed recently to follow a more participatory approach in establishment of Water Users Associations and, on the basis of positive experiences worldwide, SCWE is willing also to scale up the process to the level of Water Users Federations.
Water users associations in Armenia : analysis of current situation and future trends
The experience of Water Consumers Cooperatives accumulated in Armenia during the past six years has been mixed. On one hand, some of the cooperatives have provided evidence of being potentially capable of organizing themselves and responding to the needs of their members more effectively than any central governmental organization. On the other hand, many other aspects are still unresolved. Created in 2001 the State Committee for Water Economy (SCWE) agreed recently to follow a more participatory approach in establishment of Water Users Associations and, on the basis of positive experiences worldwide, SCWE is willing also to scale up the process to the level of Water Users Federations.
Economic Factors Shaping Western Water Allocation
Although most of the continental United States west of the 100th meridian is classified as arid or semiarid, water resources in the region have historically been treated as if they were relatively abundant. The perception of abundant water has been fostered largely by policies and institutions developed in an earlier era to facilitate the settlement of the West. These policies and institutions have persisted to current times in part because of their ability to insulate water users from a portion of the real cost of water. However, the perception of abundance masks the fact that western water resources are subject to increasing physical scarcity. Although somewhat outdated, the Second National Assessment of the U.S. Water Resources Council provides evidence of the depth and extent of this scarcity. Two crude measures of physical scarcity for the nine major hydrologic basins of the West are presented in table 1. In the first column, the sum of consumptive and in-stream uses is reported as a percentage of average annual runoff from precipitation. In the second column, total use is reported as a percentage of dry year runoff, where dry years are defined by a hydrologic frequency of I in 5. The figures show that in an average year, use levels in five of the nine basins exceed renewable supplies. In dry years, use levels in all basins exceed renewable supplies. The differences between annual use and annual runoff are accounted for by pumping groundwater at rates which exceed the rate of recharge. While the mining of groundwater may be economically justifiable, it cannot be sustained over the long run. Thus, in many areas of the West, existing levels of water use cannot continue indefinitely without supplemental sources of supply. The patterns of western water use are heavily dominated by irrigation, which accounts for a little over 90% of total consumptive use and 84% of total withdrawals. Municipal and industrial uses account for 6.6% of consumptive use (9% of withdrawals), while mineral and energy production make up the remaining 3.4% of consumptive use (7% of withdrawals) (U.S. Water Resources Council). Irrigation's share of withdrawals has remained relatively constant over the last three decades despite an increase of almost 9 million acres of irrigated land. This is explained primarily by the fact that during this period water use in the nonagricultural sectors grew for the first time at rates comparable to the growth rate of irrigation uses (Frederick). The current picture of western water resou c s, then, is one characterized by increasing physical scarcity and use patterns that are overwhelmingly dominated by the agricultural sector. In the remainder of this paper, some of he economic forces acting on western water resources are identified and analyzed, and a case study is presented to illustrate that the intensifying water scarcity may be largely attributable to institutions which promote both allocative inflexibility and the perception of abundance.