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In rural areas of Chile, where water is mostly used as an essential farm input via irrigation canals, Comunidades de Agua (CdA), or water communities, have gained recognition as an alternative to national or state-run resource management institutions . This is because rural communities tend to share irrigation
infrastructure, which transforms the water into a common-pool resource, CdAs face many of the classical
problems of collective action in their management. This report evaluates factors affecting the decision to participate in yearly irrigation and maintenance activities and the impacts of current behavior on input purchase and farm revenues. This has been done by using combined household and community-level data collected from the Maule Region (VII) of Chile.

The findings in the paper reveal that CdA characteristics explain much of the variation in participation decisions, contribution amounts, and subsequent farm revenues. The paper reports that group heterogeneity, captured by landholding differences within the CdA community, de-incentivises households to contribute to irrigation maintenance activities, which lowers the value of the farms.

The paper concludes that CdA membership in a higher-level Juntas de Vigilancia (JdV) (watch committees compromised of CdAs receiving water from irrigation channels) is detrimental to fostering support for CdA contributions but vital in the household’s decision to purchase inputs. Connecting CdA presidents to higher-level water authorities and to other CdA presidents appears to induce monetary participation and increase contributions across all categories. This enables CdAs to keep canals well maintained, yielding higher revenues for farmers.

The paper recommends that:

• there is need to account for economic heterogeneity among members and to lower the transaction costs of maintaining connections with other irrigation authorities
• programs that connect CdA presidents both laterally, across groups, and vertically, to higher-level water authorities, should have positive effects on the ability of the CdAs to improve management of the internal canal infrastructure
• further research is required to investigate connections across stakeholders and the process by which they induce contribution participation and affect farm revenues
• there is need to critically analyse and carefully assess the ability of CdAs to manage resources
• the ability of the household, as well as the CdA, to adapt to climate change must be put into consideration when assessing the impact
• there is need to address CdA inefficiencies today in order to enhance the ability of CdAs, and households to adapt immediately or in the future.

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