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Ovbiagbonhia, A R (2021) Learning to innovate: How to foster innovation competence in students of built environment at universities of applied sciences, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , Wageningen University and Research.
Pérez, Z G (2005) Appropriate designs and appropriating irrigation systems : Irrigation infrastructure development and users' management capability in Bolivia, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , Wageningen University and Research.
- Type: Thesis
- Keywords: hydraulics; sustainability; government; infrastructure management; irrigation; learning; designer; Bolivia; case study
- ISBN/ISSN:
- URL: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2564078631
- Abstract:
Because of Bolivia’s agro-climatic conditions, irrigation has become a priority issue for our country’s agricultural production. Therefore, rural people press for improvements for their existing irrigation systems or construction of new systems. Accordingly, irrigation system construction and upgrades figure prominently in municipal, prefecture and sub-prefecture operating plans. In this context, Bolivia is investing funds from various sources to implement numerous irrigation projects. One key aspect of Bolivian irrigation systems is that they are user-managed. The Bolivian government invests very little and has almost never invested any resources in water management; its role in regulating and creating norms for local water management has been relatively minor. This implies that any improvements introduced in them must ensure that user-management can continue, based on users’ current or potential irrigation management capacity. Although most irrigation systems in Bolivia are community-managed1, there are many “threats”, partly involving irrigation projects themselves. So far, the results are discouraging. Much of the infrastructure built by intervention projects is not being used or is in bad condition, which calls for in-depth research into the causes. In response, this book sets out to explore these unforeseen threats from interventions expected to improve irrigated agriculture and farmers’ responses to them, and to help learning for the future, through detailed case studies of four intervention projects to improve irrigation infrastructure and management. Its objectives are to explore and demonstrate the ‘divorce’ that is taking place between how critical actors think about irrigation infrastructure design and management, and how designers often impose their own narrow preferences in infrastructure composition and performance, without reflecting on users’ preferences and needs. It also sets out to debate the conditions that will help new irrigation infrastructure fit better in with management characteristics and production potential of irrigation systems, in order to guarantee sustainability. This research has devoted special attention to analyses of infrastructure, in relation to their management and support organisation. However, this study is not a detailed study of infrastructure hydraulics, nor a study of knowledge and biases in design, nor an ethnographic study of social practices. Rather it provides an integrated analysis of infrastructure, management principles to obtain water using that infrastructure, and intervention support to build both. This is done to show how farmers (re)create systems that are functional and sustainable according to their current needs, and can still enable new future possibilities for production and labour deployment by farmers. While infrastructure diagnosis and its relation to design is the critical empirical material, the entry and closing debate always relates it back to farmers’ production systems.