Tertiary sub-system management: proceedings of one-day workshop held on June 18, 1995 in Lahore, Pakistan

Irrigation management / Watercourses / Institution building / Water conveyance / Water distribution / Irrigation practices / Economic aspects / Pakistan

Farmers actions and improvements in irrigation performance below the Mogha : how farmers manage water scarcity and abundance in a large scale irrigation system in South-Eastern Punjab, Pakistan

The irrigation systems of Punjab, Pakistan are not functioning effectively in relation to design criteria or farmers' needs. This under-performance is attributed to among others, scarcity of irrigation water, changes in cropping intensity and mis-allocation of available resources. Presently irrigation system management in Pakistan is undergoing institutional reforms- to introduce Participatory Irrigation Management with involvement of new Farmers Organisations in water management- that is expected to result in improved water distribution performance and financial sustainability of the system. This study was conducted to investigate the impact, value and capability of farmers' local water management actions in a large-scale canal irrigation system, to contribute in the wider debates about Participatory Irrigation Management and sustainability of groundwater use in such schemes in Pakistan.An interdisciplinary, socio-technical approach was used as the main methodological approach for this study. A comparative study method was used to analyse farmers' actions for water management. The research was undertaken in the Fordwah Irrigation System, which serves a command area of 232,000 hectares. Six watercourses along the two distributaries (at the tail of the system) were selected for in-depth study. Fieldwork was conducted between November 1996 to April 1998. Water delivery performance was measured at the outlets of these watercourses. Collective and individual water management actions were studied to understand their dynamics and their impact on improving water delivery to the farm.The study suggests that there is neither a standard set of water management activities nor they are strictly planned, in the study area. Farmers' actions are mostly subject to their desires to match water demand with supply, however one can still see some of the water management activities that are inevitable to operate the system. The actions taken and the way and time these activities are organised and performed is difficult to predict in advance. Collective action is undertaken more at the watercourse or higher level in the irrigation system, whereas individual actions are mainly undertaken at the farm level.The four main findings of the study are: 1) that farmers are knowledgeable and capable actors who take actions that improve water supply and compensate for dysfunctional delivery; 2) farmers actions are not only technically and economically sound but also have motives other than just economic benefit; 3) farmers' management cannot be classified as 'contingent management' and is rather performance-oriented; and 4) current performance indicators, which are not able to show realities of social relations shaping water availability, could be improved by including criteria to assess performance of irrigation system from the perspectives of different actors. By incorporating the way farmers intervene with the system and thus appropriate the water delivery, such new performance studies could portray local water dynamics of a system and support recommendations based on reality to improve the functioning of the irrigation system.The patterns of conjunctive water use at the farm level suggest that in future groundwater must continue to provide significant amount of water for crop production. Farmers already organise management actions in the irrigation system: new Farmers' Organisation may improve the accountability of these to other farmers.</p

Key and Smart Actions to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty through Irrigation and Drainage

In the pursuit of information to support the policies and actions to alleviate hunger and poverty from a perspective of the role and impacts of irrigation and drainage, this paper attempts to provide correlation between water scarcity, community and poverty. Many reviews have found strong direct and indirect relationships between irrigation and poverty. One of the main goals of the international community is to eliminate hunger and poverty and in this perspective, through the Millennium Development Goals much progress has been achieved and evidence obtained. Sustainable Development Goals and various United Nations and other initiatives, intend to move forward this agenda by making it a part of the broader development frameworks. In this paper, the important elements of the irrigation and drainage that affect the alleviation of hunger and poverty have been discussed. These elements are grouped into governance, rights-based developments, water rights and pricing, management, efficiency improvement, and role of technology. Both the potential and the need to make use of innovative technology and solutions in irrigation are underlined and these can be used to cater the challenges in different sub-sectors. The main focus of these solutions are on maximizing productivity and efficiency, reducing water losses, achieving sustainable intensification and managing demands on water resources and the associated trade-offs

Key and Smart Actions to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty Through Irrigation and Drainage

In the pursuit of information to support policies and actions to alleviate hunger and poverty through irrigation and drainage, this paper attempts to provide correlations between water scarcity, communities and poverty. Many reviews have found strong direct and indirect relationships between irrigation and poverty. One of the main goals of the international community is to eliminate hunger and poverty and in this perspective, through the Millennium Development Goals, much progress has been achieved and evidence obtained. Sustainable Development Goals and various other United Nations initiatives intend to move forward this agenda by making it a part of broader development frameworks. In this paper, the important elements of irrigation and drainage that affect the alleviation of hunger and poverty are discussed. These elements are grouped into governance, rights-based developments, water rights and pricing, management, efficiency improvement, and the role of technology. Both the potential and the need for innovative technology and solutions in irrigation are underlined, which can be used to cater for the challenges in different subsectors. The main focus of these solutions is on maximizing productivity and efficiency, reducing water losses, achieving sustainable intensification and managing demands on water resources and the associated trade-offs

How do water users perceive the quality of their irrigation services?: Report on a Training Course in the Use of Participatory Rural Appraisal for Irrigation Management Research, December 1994

Irrigation managementWater usersWater supplyIrrigation operationPerformanceParticipatory rural appraisalTraining

Social and ecological factors influencing offspring survival in wild macaques.

Premature loss of offspring decreases direct fitness of parents. In gregarious mammals, both ecological and social variables impact offspring survival and may interact with each other in this regard. Although a number of studies have investigated factors influencing offspring loss in mammals, we still know very little on how different factors interact with one another. We therefore investigated fetal and infant mortality in 3 large groups of wild crested macaques (Macaca nigra) over a period of up to 5 years by including potential social causes such as maternal dominance rank, male immigration, between group encounters, and ecological conditions such as rainfall in a multivariate survival analysis using Cox proportional hazards model. Infant but not fetal survival was most impaired after a recent takeover of the alpha-male position by an immigrant male. Furthermore, infant survival probability increased when there was an increase in number of group adult females and rainfall. Fetal survival probability also increased with an increase of these 2 factors, but more in high-ranking than low-ranking females. Fetal survival, unlike that of infants, was also improved by an increase of intergroup encounter rates. Our study thus stresses the importance of survival analyses using a multivariate approach and encompassing more than a single offspring stage to investigate the determinants of female direct fitness. We further provide evidence for fitness costs and benefits of group living, possibly deriving from high pressures of both within- and between-group competition, in a wild primate population

Degrees of freedom in social bonds of crested macaque females

Social bonds between group members can affect individual fitness and well-being. While the impact of bond strength is well studied, the consequences of bond predictability and equitability are often overlooked. Similarly, whether bonds reflect short-term contingencies and/or long-term social strategies remains understudied. We investigated these questions in female crested macaques (Macaca nigra), which display a tolerant social style within a nepotistic hierarchical social structure. We analysed the structure of dyadic social bonds by testing whether similarity within dyads - in kinship, dominance and age - predicted the strength, predictability and equitability of bonds. We then tested the value of social bonds by analysing the effect of their characteristics on three fitness-related behaviours: coalitionary support, feeding-in-proximity and aggression. We found that the bond characteristics of females differed substantially from those of other species with comparable data: bonds were of average strength, of moderate endurance and relatively balanced. Stronger bonds were more equitable but less predictable than weaker bonds. Closely-ranked females, but not kin or age peers, had stronger, more predictable and more equitable bonds than others. Coalitionary support was not related to any of the bond characteristics, feeding-in-proximity was positively associated with strength and predictability and aggression was positively linked to strength and equitability. These results highlight the complex picture of the benefits of social bonds in this species. They reflect the degrees of freedom tolerant macaque females can express in their social relationships within their stable social structure, a pattern that may not be given enough consideration in stable nepotistic hierarchical societies. Comparative research is necessary to establish whether these patterns are more general than previously thought or a specific feature of tolerant macaques. Investigating various characteristics of bonds together is paramount in order to appreciate the dynamics of social relationships and to better understand the social components of fitness

No behavioural response to kin competition in a lekking species

The processes of kin selection and competition may occur simultaneously if limited individual dispersal i.e. population viscosity, is the only cause of the interactions between kin. Therefore, the net indirect benefits of a specific behaviour may largely depend on the existence of mechanisms dampening the fitness costs of competing with kin. In lekking species, males may increase the mating success of their close relatives (and hence gain indirect fitness benefits) because female prefer large leks. At the same time, kin selection may also lead to the evolution of mechanisms that dampen the costs of kin competition. As this mechanism has largely been ignored to date, we used detailed behavioural and genetic data collected in the black grouse Lyrurus tetrix to test whether males mitigate the costs of kin competition through the modulation of their fighting behaviours according to kinship and the avoidance of close relatives when establishing a lek territory. We found that neighbouring males’ fighting behaviour was unrelated to kinship and males did not avoid settling down with close relatives on leks. As males’ current and future mating success are strongly related to their behaviour on the lek (including fighting behaviour and territory position), the costs of kin competition may be negligible relative to the direct benefits of successful male-male contests. As we previously showed that the indirect fitness benefits of group membership were very limited in this black grouse population, these behavioural data support the idea that direct fitness benefits gained by successful male-male encounters likely outbalance any indirect fitness benefits

Post-conflict affiliation as conflict management in captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Post-conflict affiliation between former opponents or between one of the former opponents and bystanders might have the function of conflict management, which reduces the costs associated with aggressions. One of the suggested functions of post-conflict affiliation is decreased renewed aggressions directed from aggressors to victims. However, the effect of post-conflict affiliation on renewed aggressions by victims has not been investigated. We examined whether post-conflict affiliations decreased the number of renewed aggressions initiated by winners or losers in captive bottlenose dolphins. Both winners and losers initiated renewed aggressions. However, these aggressions decreased after post-conflict affiliation between former opponents, initiated by bystanders to winners, initiated by losers to bystanders, and initiated by bystanders to losers. Post-conflict affiliation between former opponents is suggested to function as reconciliation. Post-conflict affiliation initiated by losers to bystanders is suggested to function as the protection of losers. Post-conflict affiliations initiated by bystanders to one of former opponents are suggested to function as both appeasement and protection of the opponent who affiliates with bystanders

The importance of the altricial – precocial spectrum for social complexity in mammals and birds:A review

Various types of long-term stable relationships that individuals uphold, including cooperation and competition between group members, define social complexity in vertebrates. Numerous life history, physiological and cognitive traits have been shown to affect, or to be affected by, such social relationships. As such, differences in developmental modes, i.e. the ‘altricial-precocial’ spectrum, may play an important role in understanding the interspecific variation in occurrence of social interactions, but to what extent this is the case is unclear because the role of the developmental mode has not been studied directly in across-species studies of sociality. In other words, although there are studies on the effects of developmental mode on brain size, on the effects of brain size on cognition, and on the effects of cognition on social complexity, there are no studies directly investigating the link between developmental mode and social complexity. This is surprising because developmental differences play a significant role in the evolution of, for example, brain size, which is in turn considered an essential building block with respect to social complexity. Here, we compiled an overview of studies on various aspects of the complexity of social systems in altricial and precocial mammals and birds. Although systematic studies are scarce and do not allow for a quantitative comparison, we show that several forms of social relationships and cognitive abilities occur in species along the entire developmental spectrum. Based on the existing evidence it seems that differences in developmental modes play a minor role in whether or not individuals or species are able to meet the cognitive capabilities and requirements for maintaining complex social relationships. Given the scarcity of comparative studies and potential subtle differences, however, we suggest that future studies should consider developmental differences to determine whether our finding is general or whether some of the vast variation in social complexity across species can be explained by developmental mode. This would allow a more detailed assessment of the relative importance of developmental mode in the evolution of vertebrate social systems