 The Administration of New Zealand Irrigation: History and AnalysisRene Le Prou No 19302, Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Abstract: The sharply contrasting ways in which community irrigation schemes in New Zealand were developed and managed before and after 1990 illustrate the operation of decentralised vis-à-vis centralised (planning) industry governance systems. While the evidence is not easily quantifiable, what evidence there is suggests that the shift to a decentralised system that took place about 1990 coincides with improved irrigation efficiency. NZ irrigation thus provides an example of the global move away from centrally planned systems and illustrates the important elements of well functioning decentralised systems. Today, farmer owned companies - rather than State owned - are responsible and accountable for scheme development and management. In combination with the RMA - which enables a decentralised approach to resource use - this has facilitated innovation in scheme design, more efficient management, and better water use. It has also revealed more precisely the value of water in irrigation. Keywords: irrigation; administration (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vuw:vuwcsr:19302 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation ISCR, PO Box 600, Victoria University Wellington 6140, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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