Application of participatory rural appraisal methods for action research on water management.

Drawing on case studies from six countries, this report examines recent innovative applications of PRA in research, development and impact analysis of irrigation and water resource management programmes. The case studies are taken from different socio-technical contexts and range from the use of PRA to examine water user's perspectives of irrigation performance to watershed management planning. Lessons learnt from the examples are outlined and finally challenges and opportunities for the use of participatory methods in water resource management are summarised. Issues considered include, confusion over definitions and objectives, the degree of importance placed on methods, confusion over the role of professionals, the influence of politics and power, measuring of impacts, complementarity between conventional research methods and PRAand finally the challenge of institutionalising participatory approaches in government bureaucracies.