The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Operational decision · 2013–2023
Kazakhstan's IDIP-2 rebuilt 800 km of canals, then handed upkeep to farmer cooperatives
A World Bank project fixed Kazakhstan's leaky Soviet-era canals, then piloted farmer cooperatives to run maintenance—yields rose 50% on rebuilt land.
Second Irrigation and Drainage Improvement Project
The solution
Kazakhstan inherited Soviet-era irrigation that wasted water and crumbled for lack of upkeep. The naive fix was to keep pouring concrete while leaving operation and maintenance to an overstretched state agency. Instead, the World Bank-financed IDIP-2 (approved 2013, a US$102.9 million IBRD loan of a US$343 million project) rebuilt the system and changed who runs it.
The project rehabilitated more than 800 km of canals and modernized water management across over 100,000 hectares, adding digitalized monitoring and remote pump controls so losses became visible in real time. All 11 irrigation schemes under the project now operate under improved water management.
The decisive hand was organizational: two pilot agricultural cooperatives covering 4,274 hectares and 430 farms took direct responsibility for operating and maintaining the infrastructure, supported by training and financing tied to improved farm incomes. Water now arrives reliably and on time; one farmer reported cotton yields up 50% to 6,500 kg per hectare.
Why it worked: the people who depend on the water now own its maintenance, and farmers stayed free to choose crops by market demand rather than project decree. The Government of Kazakhstan plans to scale the cooperative model nationwide, citing it as a replicable approach under the new Water Code and the 2024–2030 water strategy.
Why it worked
- Farmers who run the system fix small problems before they become expensive failures.
- The project funded maintenance capacity, not just concrete, so systems survived the handover.
- Digital monitoring made losses visible and freed operators for preventive rather than reactive work.
- Leaving crop choices to farmers let market demand, not the project, set the payoff.
What can be applied
Infrastructure decays when nobody owns upkeep. Pair capital works with handing operations to the people who depend on it—plus training and financing—and canals keep working after the donor leaves.
Aftermath
By completion all 11 irrigation schemes operated under improved water management, and the two pilot cooperatives covering 4,274 hectares and 430 farms took over direct operation and maintenance. The Government of Kazakhstan intends to scale the cooperative model nationwide, and the World Bank cites the project as a replicable model aligned with the new Water Code and the 2024–2030 concept for water resources.
Sources
- Kazakhstan's Irrigation Overhaul: Less Waste, Better Harvests
- World Bank to help Kazakhstan modernize irrigation system
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.