New Opportunities for the Irrigation Sector

Prior to that, at the 3rd session of the 14th National Assembly, the Law on Irrigation was also passed and took effect from July 1, 2017. This marks a new opportunity for the irrigation sector amid the increasing impact of climate change on agricultural production and the lives of the people.

For a long time, the irrigation sector has been constrained by a subsidized mechanism, overlapping and redundant management, with at least three Ministries (Natural Resources and Environment; Agriculture and Rural Development; Industry and Trade) jointly managing, especially in the field of water resource management according to river basins. According to statistics, the country currently has more than 6,600 reservoirs, 10,000 large electric pumping stations, 5,500 major irrigation sluices, 234,000 km of canals, nearly 26,000 km of various dikes. The irrigation system ensures irrigation for 7.5 million hectares of rice, 1.7 million hectares of crops, and industrial plants... However, many irrigation works are designed to serve small-scale agricultural production, mainly focusing on providing water for rice, while most dry crops are not irrigated or are irrigated using outdated methods that waste water. The construction of urban, industrial, and transportation infrastructure impedes flood drainage, adding pressure to irrigation systems. Meanwhile, enterprises exploiting irrigation works mostly operate under a subsidized mechanism, lacking supervisory tools, leading to deteriorating infrastructure and wasteful irrigation. Climate change, on the other hand, continuously and directly affects agricultural production, causing phenomena such as rainfall shortage, erratic and high-frequency rain in short periods, prolonged heat, severe cold... leading to river and stream flow reduction, drought, salinization, flooding... Therefore, irrigation work in the current context requires innovation to address climate change and agricultural restructuring objectives. Irrigation must not only serve rice but also crops and high-economic-value vegetables, in a production-oriented manner. Besides meeting the water supply for production, it must ensure water quality for rural household use. To achieve this, the irrigation sector must turn water into a commodity to prevent waste of resources and create a premise for sustainable development.

The irrigation sector now has a "manual" in the newly enacted Law on Irrigation, with fundamental changes facilitating the promotion of private investment in irrigation work, enhancing the quality of investment, construction, and exploitation management of irrigation works and saving water. Particularly, the shift from an irrigation fee mechanism to irrigation services will change people's perception, enhance awareness of water-saving, and motivate organizations and individuals to invest in irrigation activities. Additionally, the responsibility for state management in water resource planning and management is explicitly defined for the irrigation sector to ensure unified planning and avoid the previous overlapping and redundancy.

The remaining issue is how the irrigation sector will "wave the flag" to ensure that the legal policies on irrigation soon come into effect.

Source: Nhan Dan Newspaper Online

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