| Project Detail |
Türkiyes agriculture, heavily reliant on irrigation, faces challenges from climate change, necessitating modernization of irrigation systems to enhance efficiency and resilience. The government aims to increase irrigation efficiency from 50% in 2023 to 60% by 2030 to address water scarcity and ensure food security. The project will improve irrigation service and water efficiency for approximately 72,000 ha, serving around 50,000 households (farms), or approximately 200,000 beneficiaries. Beneficiaries also include staff from DSI’s regional offices and staff from WUAs through capacity building on managing water resources efficiently, adopting climate-smart agricultural practices, and ensuring sustainable irrigation management. the PDO of the Project is to improve irrigation service delivery and water efficiency, to enhance resilience to climate change in selected irrigation schemes. The Project has three components: Component 1: Irrigation System Rehabilitation and Modernization This component will finance critical climate adaptation investments to modernize DSI’s (General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works) irrigation systems in selected schemes, building on successful activities from the ongoing TIMP. By investing in the reduction of climate-induced water (evaporation and seepage) losses in the irrigation conveyance and distribution system, and ensuring equitable water allocation among downstream and upstream farmers, this component will enhance the irrigation subsector’s resilience to intensifying climate-change-driven water shortages, droughts, and extreme weather events. Additionally, this component will enable climate-responsive water management through smart water metering (smart water meters will be procured as part of the civil works packages, to be managed through the WUAs per Component 2), ensuring efficient and adaptive water allocation in response to increasing climate variability. Component 2: Institutional Support, Digital Irrigation and Smart Water Accounting Enhancing farmers’ capacity to use information and communication technology will significantly strengthen their ability to adapt to climate change impacts. This component will leverage the Irrigation Facilities Spatial Information System (SUTEM)—an innovative digital service developed by DSI under the ongoing World Bank-financed TIMP (P158418)—which has been successfully implemented across 3 million ha. SUTEM provides real-time data on water availability, irrigation schedules, and efficient water use practices, equipping farmers with essential tools for climate-adaptive irrigation. Additionally, this component will support DSI in developing the ‘National Program for Water User Association (WUA) Capacity Building’ in the subproject areas financed under Component 1. This program aims to strengthen WUAs’ capacity to manage water resources efficiently, adopt climate-smart agricultural practices, and ensure sustainable irrigation management at the local level. Together, the initiatives under this component are designed to empower farmers and WUAs with the knowledge and tools necessary to enhance water-use efficiency and adapt to deteriorating environmental conditions, particularly the increasing risk of water shortages and extreme weather events. The farmers’ contribution of approximately US$3.3 million in ISF payments will support the irrigation system’s O&M costs and is considered as a source of unguaranteed commercial financing. The World Bank will support SUTEM with AI activity, augmenting the Government’s strong push to digitalize the water sector. Component 3: Project Management (US$3 million) This component includes E&S management, fiduciary management, and DSI’s activities linked to coordination and management of the project. Eligible expenditure will include consultant and non-consulting services, goods, training, and incremental operating costs required by DSI to implement the project according to World Bank policies and guidelines. The Project Development Objective (PDO) is to improve irrigation service delivery and water efficiency for strengthening climate resilience of selected irrigation schemes. |
