The decline of agriculture in Taiwan has adversely affected the incentives of farmers and the government to engage in irrigation management. Despite that, Taiwan s irrigation systems have shown a high degree of robustness. This study seeks to understand how institutions have contributed to the robustness of Taiwanese irrigation. Conceptualizing an irrigation system as a social-ecological system (SES), this study examines the development and design of Taiwanese irrigation institutions, and how these institutions have enabled farmers and irrigation managers to cope with the dynamics in the SES, and hence contributed to the system s robustness.The study has found that the robust systems are built upon institutions that allow effective coordination of the activities of a multitude of farmers, enhance the development and sustenance of a repertoire of ideas, and nest the problem-solving efforts of various scopes and scales in a complementary manner. The institutions enable individuals and organizations at different levels to engage in continuous learning and adaptation that, in turn, facilitates the systems adaptation to the changing environment.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Volume (Year): 2 (2006) Issue (Month): 02 (August) Pages: 203-226 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF