A farmer irrigates his farm in Bozhou, East China's Anhui province. Grassroots associations have helped farmers efficiently use water. Liu Qinli / Xinhua

User permit and punishment systems help dissuade farmers' long-term habit of wasting resources

Zhong Xinggui is expecting a bountiful harvest this year. After suffering droughts for years, his wheat fields finally turned into a lush forest of green stalks.

"It's the water users association that helps us through the difficulties," says the 33-year-old farmer in Zhonggao village of Hengshui, a city of Hebei province in North China where many villages have been fighting droughts for years. "Without it, we are not able to conserve enough water for the irrigation."

For many like Zhong, the water users association is more than an organization formed and run by farmers. It helps them make the best use of the scarce resource.

In Zhong's village, groundwater is the only water resource that farmers rely on for irrigation and daily use.

"We used to draw water as much as we wanted from wells since everyone was charged almost the same for water usage and no one controlled how much water each household consumed," says Zhong Zhanbiao, a farmer in the same village.

But droughts worsened the water situation, and in turn, affected the crop yields and livestock. To address the eroding resource, the village founded a water users association in 2004. Twenty members were selected from 482 villagers to plan and operate irrigation services by measuring water volume and collecting data.

"Unlike in the past, we allocate water to each household so that we can measure the water consumption of individuals," says Zhong Xingqiang, a farmer and vice-president of the association. "By doing this, we can better manage water resources by ourselves. During normal times, we reduce the water flows of irrigation canals to conserve the water in case of an emergency."

Zhong Xingqiang says the association also teaches farmers to use water efficiently by irrigating at night and checking for any leaks.

At present, there are more than 20,000 such associations across China with 70 million members farming 143,000 hectares.

"Farmers are typically members of small water users associations. But once these small groups band together under larger organizations with up to 2,000 members, they gain better access to work together with government agencies on the operations and upkeep of their local water resource," says Paul van Hofwegen, World Bank's senior water resources specialist.

"This would include joint planning on water allocation and distribution, repairs and canal cleaning. In return, this will enhance farmers' ability of water management."

In 2005, the water administrative department of Hengshui introduced a water usage permit system with a punishment mechanism to further tackle the issue. The Zhonggao village was the pilot site.

Local authorities give each farmer a water right card, which records the annual water usage for each farmer. Those who exceed the limit pay a fine to the association.

Xing Baolin, director of the water administrative department in Taocheng district in Hengshui, says the new system protects the farmer's water use rights while, at the same time, limits the farmer's water use without harming agricultural productivity.

"I'm glad that they put a limit on how much we use every year, because it really works. Not only has the water consumption reduced, it also helps us have a better sense of water conservation so that we can get through the hard times," says Shuan Tan, a farmer in Zhonggao village.

The drought has changed the way farmers in Zhonggao village treat the water resource. With the water-saving structure in place, each farmer can save more than 100 cu m of water per mu (15 mu equal 1 hectare) annually. The total amount of water consumption has reduced by 14.6 percent in the past five years.

However, Khalid Mohtadullah, a senior adviser of Global Water Partnership, a worldwide organization focusing on the integrated management of water resources for sustainability, says better management of water resources is only the first step.

"One of the best ways to improve water use is to tackle the efficiency of the biggest users of water: farmers," he says. "In China, conservation is going to be forced on farmers simply because the supply is very limited and one of the best ways for farmers to improve water use in this area is through more efficient irrigation."

Currently, water use in agriculture is about 390 billion cu m per year, accounting for 70 percent of all water consumption in China. Among the total water consumption in agriculture, some 90 percent went to farmland irrigation, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.

Most of China's fields use flood irrigation methods that can result in water waste, with a hectare of farmland typically requiring 20,000-30,000 cu m of water a year. As a result, the country has made improving water efficiency in agriculture a major priority.

China will strive to achieve 60 billion cu m of annual water-saving capacity in 2020 and water-saving irrigation areas should take up more than 80 percent of the country's total effective irrigation acreage.