USCID water management conference

Presented at Upgrading technology and infrastructure in a finance-challenged economy: a USCID water management conference held on March 23-26, 2010 in Sacramento, California.With rising cropping intensity and more and more adaptation of high yielding varieties, the level of irrigation service demanded by farmers is on the rise. This coupled with greater fluctuations in supply sources due to issues like climate change has been making the task of the irrigation water supply providers even more difficult. In order to meet this rising demand of service level, it is essential to have appropriate infrastructure and matching technology which needs to be established in the case of new schemes and continuously maintained and upgraded in the case of existing irrigation schemes. While new technologies are being developed to meet these requirements the other key challenge lies in making it efficient and cost effective. This paper gives an overview of the context of Nepal and explains the need of making investments in irrigation more cost-effective. It mentions about the exercises that were carried out in large irrigation schemes using the approach and tool developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization on the United Nations (FAO) and discusses how the country was able to identify the needs and plan and implement the irrigation modernization works in a cost-effective way and produce optimum results using the limited available resources