Blueprints for water user associations' accountability versus local reality: evidence from South Kazakhstan

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been major changes in the agricultural sector in Kazakhstan. While during the Soviet Union agricultural production was organized in large scale state and collective farms, after independence Kazakhstan started to privatize the agricultural land and established water user associations (WUAs) on their territories. The paper critically evaluates the existing international blueprints of WUAs. The paper concludes that irrigation management transfer (IMT) should not imply rapid and complete withdrawal of the state, but that the state is, at least in the start up period, necessary to enforce accountability of new formed WUAs.