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Mapping Social Networks for Performance Evaluation of Irrigation Water Management in Dry Areas

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Abstract

Collaboration between actors is an important determinant of water governance, particularly in developing countries suffering from lack of institutional and organizational performances for water management. The objective of this paper is to use the social network (SN) concept in bringing depth to the understanding of local irrigation governance in three irrigated schemes located in dry regions of southern Tunisia. Local stakeholders in the considered schemes interact around different water-related issues. These include authorizations for access to water, extension services for irrigated crops, training on the use of irrigation technologies, and finance and subsidies of irrigation water saving equipment. We considered each of these types of interactions as different tie and we mapped social networks around each of them. For each network, actors’ densities, frequencies, and weight were reported. The results were revealing that better performances of water management are observed in areas with high SN density and high centrality of water users’ associations. The relative “weights” of actors in the three considered areas were significantly different, indicating that the application of a standard decentralization process of irrigation water may result in different local organizational arrangements, depending on patterns of social interactions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry areas (ICARDA), Social, Economics and Policy Research Program (SEPRP), Bldg no. 13, Khalid Abu Dalbouh St. Abdoun, PO Box 950764, Amman, 11195, Jordan

    Aymen Frija

  2. Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen de Montpellier (IAMM), 3191 Route de Mende, 34090, Montpellier, France

    Abderraouf Zaatra

  3. Institut Supérieur Agronomique de Chott-Mariem, BP 47, 4042, Chott-Mariem (Sousse), Tunisia

    Iheb Frija

  4. Ecole Supérieure d’Agriculture de Mograne (ESAM), 1121, Mograne, Zaghouan, Tunisia

    Hassen AbdelHafidh

Authors
  1. Aymen Frija
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  2. Abderraouf Zaatra
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  3. Iheb Frija
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  4. Hassen AbdelHafidh
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Correspondence to Aymen Frija.

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Frija, A., Zaatra, A., Frija, I. et al. Mapping Social Networks for Performance Evaluation of Irrigation Water Management in Dry Areas. Environ Model Assess 22, 147–158 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-016-9527-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-016-9527-1

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