Pirates or pioneers? Unplanned irrigation around small reservoirs in Burkina Faso

•Increasingly farmers use individually owned motorpumps to irrigate directly from reservoirs.•The area under ‘unofficial’ irrigation sometimes is larger than the official irrigated area.•Upstream vegetable cultivation is more profitable than downstream rice cultivation.•However it poses considerable...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Agricultural water management 2014-01, Vol.131, p.212-220
Main Authors: de Fraiture, Charlotte, Kouali, Gael Ndanga, Sally, Hilmy, Kabre, Priva
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Burkina Faso
Common resource management
Cultivation
Farming
ghana
Individual irrigation
institutions
Irrigation
management
Pirate
productivity
Reservoirs
resources
schemes
Small private irrigation
systems
upper east region
Upstream
Vegetables
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Summary:•Increasingly farmers use individually owned motorpumps to irrigate directly from reservoirs.•The area under ‘unofficial’ irrigation sometimes is larger than the official irrigated area.•Upstream vegetable cultivation is more profitable than downstream rice cultivation.•However it poses considerable water management and environmental challenges. Small reservoirs in Burkina Faso are constructed for many purposes such as domestic water uses, livestock watering and irrigated rice production downstream of the dam. Increasingly farmers use individually owned motorized pumps to draw water directly from the reservoir and irrigate vegetables upstream of the dam. This practice, while tolerated, is unauthorized and referred to as ‘irrigation pirate’ in French. Upstream vegetable cultivation is successful because it is more profitable than downstream rice cultivation. Often, the ‘unofficial’ irrigated area around the reservoir is much larger than the official command area below the dam. However, in the absence of an overarching authority to manage the water source, this may lead to conflicts and resource degradation. We take the example of the Korsimoro reservoir in Burkina Faso to illustrate the positive and negative impacts of spontaneous individual irrigation around communally managed water bodies.
ISSN:0378-3774
1873-2283
DOI:10.1016/j.agwat.2013.07.001