The CSIAP Launches CMC Handbook to Safeguard Village Tank Cascade Systems

CMC book is being presented to the minister by Mr. Saman Bandulasena 

The Cascade Management Committee (CMC) Handbook—designed as a practical and comprehensive guide to strengthen the planning, coordination, and management of cascade systems—was officially launched today (30th) by the Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP) at a special ceremony held at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation (MALLI). The event was held under the patronage of Hon. Lal Kantha, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation, underscoring the Government’s strong commitment to safeguarding Sri Lanka’s traditional Village Tank Cascade Systems through improved institutional coordination and climate-resilient water and land management practices.

The handbook is expected to serve as a key reference for Cascade Management Committees, government agencies, farmer organisations, and development partners, supporting more integrated, participatory, and sustainable approaches to cascade and landscape management across the country. 

This handbook provides a common framework and reference for all stakeholders engaged in cascade conservation and development. Drawing on field experience and expert knowledge, it promotes an integrated, landscape-based approach that balances environmental sustainability with community and institutional needs.

Prof. Wickramasighe delivering his speech

Specifically, the handbook seeks to provide clear and practical guidance to Cascade Management Committee (CMC) members, government officials, partner agencies, Farmer Organisations (FOs), and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) by clearly defining their roles, responsibilities, and operational procedures in the management of cascade landscape systems. By establishing a shared understanding of institutional mandates and processes, the handbook supports more effective and accountable governance of cascade systems at the local and landscape levels. 

In addition, the handbook aims to strengthen collaboration and coordination among government agencies, farmer organisations, local communities, and development partners. By promoting inclusive participation and shared decision-making, it encourages stakeholders to work collectively towards common objectives in cascade and landscape management, thereby enhancing coherence, trust, and long-term sustainability of interventions.

The CMC Handbook launch ceramony  in full swing

The handbook also promotes coordinated action among relevant government agencies, local authorities, and communities to ensure the efficient use of financial, technical, and natural resources. Through improved alignment of plans and activities, it seeks to minimize duplication of efforts, reduce institutional overlaps, and enhance the overall effectiveness and impact of cascade-related initiatives.

Furthermore, the handbook focuses on strengthening the institutional capacities of CMCs and partner organisations to effectively plan, monitor, and evaluate cascade-related interventions. By enhancing skills, systems, and tools for evidence-based decision-making, it supports the implementation of well-coordinated, climate-resilient, and sustainable cascade management practices across Sri Lanka.

Content Designer and Consultant Editor of the CMC Handbook, Mr. Sarath Wickramaratne, emphasized the critical importance of this handbook and its role in shaping the future of Cascade Management. He highlighted how the handbook serves as a comprehensive guide for planners, practitioners, and policymakers by integrating traditional knowledge with modern management principles. According to him, the handbook provides practical frameworks and strategic insights that support informed decision-making, capacity building, and community participation.

Mr. Wickramarathne addressing the audience

Mr. Wickramaratne further explained that the handbook contributes significantly to the long-term sustainability of the Tank Cascade System by promoting ecosystem-based management, resilience to climate change, and the protection of hydrological and ecological functions. Through this approach, the handbook strengthens efforts toward sustainable water management, agricultural productivity, and environmental conservation, ensuring that the Tank Cascade System continues to benefit future generations. Marking the occasion, a special speech was delivered by Prof. Danthurae Wickramasinghe, Chair of Management Accounting at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, England, who made the keynote address on the role of the Cascade Management. 

A significant milestone moment was marked when the CMC Handbook was formally presented to Hon. Minister Lal Kantha by Mr. Saman Bandulasena, Project Director of CSIAP. This symbolic presentation underscored the importance of the handbook as a strategic knowledge resource for strengthening Cascade Management practices. The occasion reflected the collective efforts of stakeholders involved in its development and highlighted the government’s commitment to promoting sustainable management of the Tank Cascade System through informed policy guidance and practical implementation.  

The event featured addresses by several distinguished speakers, including Hon. Lal Kantha, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation; Mrs. Latheesha P. Liyanage, Additional Secretary (Development) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation (MALLI); Dr. Athula Senaratne, Senior Agriculture Specialist of the World Bank; Mr. Saman Bandulasena, Project Director  and Mr. D. V. Bandulasena, Institutional and Capacity Development Specialist, CSIAP. 

                  Minister Lal Kantha                                                          Dr. Athula Senarathne                                              Mrs. Latheesha Liyanage                                                Mr. Saman Bandulasena                                       Mr. D.V. Bandulasena   

In their remarks, the speakers highlighted the importance of strengthened institutional coordination, community participation, and capacity development in safeguarding Sri Lanka’s Village Tank Cascade Systems, while emphasising the role of the newly launched CMC Handbook in supporting sustainable, climate-resilient cascade and landscape management practices. 

The event was attended by World Bank Officials, senior government officials, including Chief Secretaries, District Secretaries, representatives of implementing agencies, and CSIAP staff, reflecting the high-level institutional commitment to cascade-based water resource management and climate-resilient agricultural development in Sri Lanka.

By Samantha Mallawaarachchi, IEC & ICT Specialist, PMU, CSIAP and 
Photographs by Samal Perera, MALLI

Accountability on the Ground: Insights from CMC, SAC and CSA Practices in SL

Development interventions do not merely implement predefined accountability frameworks; rather, they actively generate and shape accountability through their practices and processes. We studied how such development interventions produce accountability through everyday practices, material infrastructures, and institutional arrangements, with a particular focus on the World Bank’s Climate-Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project in Sri Lanka, especially its interventions in the Nabadawewa Cascade in Horowpothana, Anuradhapura. Specifically, we discuss how accountability emerges on the ground through three interconnected sites: Cascade Management Committees (CMCs), Social Audit Committees (SACs), and Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices.

To explore how accountability unfolds at the ground level across these three sites, I had the valuable opportunity to engage with a diverse range of individuals and settings during several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka—primarily within the Nabadawewa cascade. I had the opportunity to interview and listen to the experiences of a wide range of individuals, including beneficiary farmers, farmer organization leaders, community members, elders, project staff, government officers, World Bank officials and consultants, as well as members of the CMCs and SACs. My observations extended across the cascade system—covering lakes, agricultural lands, and village communities—as well as government offices and the Farmer Training School in Thirappane. I also participated in various institutional activities such as CMC and SAC meetings, SAC trainings, a transect walk, and meetings involving community members, government officials, and World Bank representatives. In addition, I followed the project’s social media platforms and reviewed a range of documents sourced from the project website, the World Bank website, and materials shared by officials, farmers, community members, farmer organization leaders, and CMC and SAC members. With this rich, triangulated data, we now examine how some of the practices of these three sites of CMCs, SACs, and CSA interconnect with broader processes of development and accountability.

Cascade Management Committees (CMCs)

CMC Meeting at Nabadawewa, Horowpathana, Anuradhapura

The production of accountability at the ground level unfolded through specific practices of CMCs. Project teams held awareness sessions that went beyond simply informing stakeholders about the CMC; these sessions didn't merely inform stakeholders about the CMC but actively shaped them as accountable actors. Moreover, the very process of forming committees further reinforced it. Farmers learned they were now stakeholders with responsibilities for cascade conservation; government officials discovered new obligations for collaborative management.  

The transect walks through the cascades, involving both officials and local farmers, serve as a powerful example of how accountability is produced through practical, on-the-ground engagement. Walking the landscape, they documented social, economic, hydrological, and environmental challenges—not as passive observers but as actors being constituted as capable of rendering the cascade legible and governable. The farmers proudly shared with me that they had participated in the transect walk and felt happy that their input was genuinely valued. 

The Cascade Management Profile and Plan being developed are not merely planning documents but accountability technologies. Each recorded problem, pinpointed location, and proposed solution produced accountability by establishing what must be answered for, by whom, and how. Attending CMC meetings, reviewing their minutes, and listening to farmers, I witnessed accountability unfolding in real time. The discussions between farmers and officials about challenges in the cascade were not just acts of oversight—they were expressions of accountability in action. Through collaborative dialogue, they co-produced a sense of shared responsibility. Every question raised, concern voiced, and solution proposed embodied the accountability relationships fostered by the project.

Meeting with Ataurulewa Wewa SAC and World Bank Officials

Social Audit Committees (SACs)
SACs include beneficiary farmers of the rehabilitation projects, and they monitor the rehabilitation process on the ground through daily, hands-on engagement with construction sites. Their very formation illustrates how development initiatives generate accountability, rather than merely responding to pre-existing oversight structures. Each infrastructure project becomes an occasion for generating fresh monitoring subjects, new documentation practices, and additional accountability relations. The project doesn't implement a static accountability framework but continuously reproduces accountability through repeated cycles of committee formation, training, and monitoring practice.  

Ground-level accountability production occurred through training sessions where project officials taught beneficiaries how to monitor. Their involvement reflected genuine interest and ownership of the process. These meetings weren't knowledge transfer events but constitutive practices that produced "accountable citizens." Beneficiaries learned to observe, document, and evaluate—capacities not inherent but actively created through development intervention. The training transformed farmers from passive recipients into monitoring subjects capable of demanding accounts. During the SAC training, I witnessed how actively the members engaged in the sessions—asking questions, participating in discussions, and even taking photos of key information from the training slides on their phones.

Accountability is also produced through practices such as committee members physically walking to rehabilitating lakes, observing and measuring progress against specifications, comparing materials to standards, and recording their observations in logbooks. The logbooks they carried—material objects that mediate accountability relations between beneficiaries, contractors, and officials. These logbooks are not neutral recording devices but accountability technologies that transform everyday construction activities into documented, verifiable, and contestable evidence. The logbook itself became an accountability device, accumulating evidence that could later substantiate claims or demands. Each entry recorded not only constituted the SAC as an accountable observer and the observed work as subject to scrutiny, but also materialized accountability linking beneficiaries, contractors, and project officials in relations of mutual answerability.

During my visit, I witnessed this accountability production in action as project officials trained committee members on monitoring protocols, teaching them not just what to observe but how to become accountable observers. The committees don't simply watch development happen; through their embodied practices of walking, observing, measuring, and documenting, they actively produce the accountability relations that make development answerable to its intended beneficiaries.

Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practice

CSA Practices at Nabadawewa, Horowpathana, Anuradhapura

Producer societies operate as accountability nodes that bridge individual farmers and the project, materializing answerability through financial contributions, equipment distribution, facility management, training participation, and market coordination—transforming organizational membership itself into an accountability relation where farmers must answer to their societies, societies to their members and the project, and associations to their constituent societies and external market partners. Trainings in accounting, leadership, teamwork, and entrepreneurship in these societies don’t merely build capacity but produces accountable subjects capable of organizational governance, financial management, and collective decision-making.  

Training programs on these CSA practices, along with the Farmer Training School at Thirappane, produce accountability by constituting farmers as knowledgeable subjects responsible for applying learned techniques and demonstrating outcomes. These training sessions are not passive information transfers but constitutive practices that transform farmers into accountable actors who must answer for their adoption and implementation of climate-smart practices. When farmers attend training, they enter into implicit accountability relations: they become obligated to apply learned methods, demonstrate responsiveness to project knowledge, and report results back to officials and their communities. I witnessed enthusiastic farmers who, after just a single meeting, were eager to implement the group village concept and proudly showcased their progress to officials. Their actions exemplified accountability in practice—not merely by adopting new ideas, but by actively demonstrating their ability to understand, internalize, and carry out the concepts introduced during training, thereby fulfilling the responsibilities it set in motion.

Across the three sites—CMCs, SACs, and CSA practices—accountability takes shape at the ground level through everyday development practices, giving rise to new relationships, accountable subjects, and supporting infrastructures.

Special Gratitude:  To my supervisor, Prof. Danture Wickramasinghe of the University of Glasgow, UK, and Mr. Sarath Wickramaratne, Senior IDCB Consultant at the World Bank, all the officials who supported and facilitated my fieldwork, and to every participant who contributed to its success.

By Ms. Madushani Gunathilake, PhD Researcher at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Danture Wickramasinghe, University of Glasgow, UK.