Institutional Evolution and Social-Ecological Resilience: A Study of Irrigation Institutions in Taiwan
Year: 2004
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Taiwan’s irrigation management has faced a series of challenges in the \npast decades. As the country’s economy developed, agriculture has ceased \nto be a viable economic activity; the decline of agriculture has in turn \nadversely affected the incentives of farmers and the government to engage in \nirrigation management. Despite these challenges, the evolution of Taiwan’s \nirrigation systems in the past decades has been characterized by a high degree \nof resilience. Although irrigation management is unlike that in the good old \ndays when farmers actively engaged in meticulous management and were \nwilling to contribute significant manual and monetary resources, farmers’ \norganizing abilities and social capital accumulated over the years have largely \nretained, and continued to sustain a vibrant management order. The general \npicture is that while the sector as a whole has been in flux and gone through \nmany changes, the vibrancy of the system remains. \nDrawing upon the literature of complexity studies and conceptualizing \nan irrigation system as a social-ecological system (SES), this paper seeks to \nexplain and understand the institutional vibrancy and resilience of Taiwanese \nirrigation. The major argument is that the design of Taiwan’s irrigation \ninstitutions, as a result of years of trial and error, has been able to cope with \nthe dynamics inherent in the SES. The institutions allow various actors and \norganizations at different levels to engage in continuous learning and \nadaptation. I shall examine how disturbances of different types have impact \nthe structure and dynamics of the Taiwanese system, how individuals and \norganizations at different levels have responded to the disturbances, and how \nthese responses have constituted the systemic response to the changing \nenvironment.
Author: Wai Fung Lam
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2145287633