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"The amount of water used for irrigation has sharply declined during transition in Bulgaria. Large sections of existing irrigation systems were abandoned, and the ones still in use are barely maintained. Crops such as wheat and barley have replaced more water-intensive crops, including vegetables, rice and maize. This problem has an impact on the future development of agriculture and the allocation of the country's water resources. The central argument is that land fragmentation in the wake of decollectivization and restitution contributes to the irrigation systems' abandonment. This paper concentrates on the institutional factors, but also considers additional factors, that may have influenced the process; further, it examines the causes driving these changes and analyses their effect on irrigation. It is based upon a review of relevant legislation, as well as field work in 17 villages located in the Plovdiv region of Bulgaria. The paper concludes that, in addition to changes in large-scale market forces and weakening of the state enforcement mechanism, institutional settings have contributed to the decline of irrigation in Bulgaria." (author's abstract), Die Wassermenge, die in Bulgarien während des Transformationsprozesses zur Bewässerung verwendet wurde ist, im Vergleich zu früher, stark zurückgegangen. Große Bereiche der vorhandenen Bewässerungssysteme wurden aufgegeben, und diejenigen, die noch in Gebrauch sind, werden nicht ausreichend gewartet. Getreide wie Weizen und Gerste haben andere, wasserintensivere Kulturen wie Gemüse, Reis und Mais ersetzt. Dieses Problem hat Auswirkungen auf die zukünftige Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft und die Verteilung der Wasserressourcen des Landes. Die zentrale These lautet, dass die Landfragmentierung, die unmittelbar nach der Entkollektivierung einsetzte, sowie die Rückerstattungen zur Aufgabe der Bewässerungssysteme beigetragen haben. Der vorliegende Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die institutionellen Faktoren, betrachtet aber auch zusätzliche Faktoren, die diesen Prozess beeinflusst haben. Des Weiteren untersucht der Autor die Ursachen, die zu diesen Veränderungen geführt haben, und analysiert deren Auswirkungen auf die Bewässerung. Der Beitrag basiert auf einem Überblick über die relevante Gesetzgebung sowie einer Feldarbeit in 17 Dörfern der Region Plovdiv in Bulgarien. Der Autor stellt fest, dass zusätzlich zu den Veränderungen im Bereich der Marktdynamik und der Schwächung der staatlichen Zwangsmechanismen institutionelle Parameter zur Abnahme der Bewässerung in Bulgarien beigetragen haben. (ICDÜbers)

"This paper seeks to contribute to the development of institutional options for the management of public goods in Central and Eastern Europe. It assesses the potential of different governance structures, including administrative hierarchies, market approaches, and efforts at local non-market co-ordination. The paper examines the management of public goods in Central and Eastern Europe through a study of open space management and urban sprawl in a semi-urban county near Warsaw, Poland. The protection of open space poses significant challenges to semi-urban land management, as its benefits cannot be captured by individual entities and accrue as much to urban residents as to local people. The concrete institutional options investigated comprehend the use of land registers for monitoring land conversion, establishment of land trusts in part financed by a development gains tax, and technical and organisational support for local environmental organisations. The evaluation of options builds on an analysis of causes underlying rapid land conversion in the past decade. The causal analysis demonstrates that privatisation and decentralisation have evoked the radical changes in land use. The demand for housing land motivated farmers to sell semi-urban land, as the state could not enforce its legal oversight over land use. Land conversion was driven by local alliances of farmers eager to "cash in" on their newly acquired rights of alienation, a broader rural society primarily interested in economic development, and local authorities lured by increasing tax revenues." [author's abstract]