Diagnostic Analysis of an Irrigation System in the Andes Region

The recognized inefficiency of many irrigation systems, set up in developing countries in the past years, forced the attention to be focused on the investigation of the causes of such a failure. The diagnostic analysis, an investigation process which aims at revealing problems, causes and effects related to the relevant actors involved in the system, has been applied to the Chambo irrigation system, located in an area of the Andes of Ecuador, 200 km south of Quito. Since the focal point of such a methodology is the user participation, through an information survey collected directly on the field, the «problems» were singled out, and were classified according to cause-effect relations and structured into a problem tree. This process allowed to defining the objectives and the proposals for solutions which were worked out by considering transferability and sustainability by system users. Solutions to one of the main reason of interruption in the water supply service, slope landslides, have been proposed using bioengineering interventions on the sides facing on the adduction channel. Bioengineering interventions are proposed based on the success they got in other parts of the world, mainly for the abundance of materials that can be found in the zone. The transferring of such technologies was also taken into account based on a bibliographic research. The analysis showed that the success of an irrigation scheme relies on the expectation of its future use.