Sprinkler irrigation has become a common component of upland agricultural livelihoods in northern Thailand. The advent of water management in upland fields involves a co-evolution of technology and institutions. This co-evolution has created new challenges in the upland resource governance landscape, as upland farmers are now significant users of water. As water managers, upland farmers interact with each others in new ways, and have added a level of complexity to upstream-downstream relations as well. The rapid and widespread adaptation of PVC-sprinkler irrigation has brought about a ‘silent revolution’ on the spread and impacts of small-scale pump irrigation), in which technology has provided greater and more flexible access to water. The implications of these developments have been for the most part overlooked or ignored. Where it has received attention, upland irrigation has been conveniently incorporated into larger discourses of watershed.
Watershed policy in Thailand has focused on the communities – predominantly upland ethnic people – in the uplands as responsible for the problems of dry-season water shortages being faced by the lowlands. The watershed discourse in northern Thailand has thus turned lowland water shortages as a political tool involving ethnicity by which the predominantly ethnic Thai lowlanders claim rights over upland resources. An overwhelming emphasis has been given to deforestation, but increasingly, upland farmers are becoming important managers of water. The technology and institutions, and associated rights systems and forms of organization have not been adequately recognized by official policy.
