Dr. Andrew Manzardo holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania. He carried out fieldwork in Nepal and has spent nearly thirty years working in participatory development projects there for GTZ, USAID and the UN system. He taught Development Anthropology for two years at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.Dr. Manzardo has also worked in Africa and the Middle East where he worked with participatory resource management in Mauritania, Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic. He returned once again to Nepal, India and Pakistan, where he worked developing water user associations for the irrigation projects of the World Bank, as well as for others. He also worked with water user associations with USAID, technical assistant for World Bank projects in Romania, as well as for natural resource management projects in the Philippines.
Dr. Manzardo is currently working as a consultant to the World Bank in the People’s Republic China on a DFID – funded project to develop water user associations as a means of managing irrigation. He is particularly concerned in increasing the participation of women and the poor in water management activities. The project currently operates in seven provinces, but the GOC will be adding an additional seven provinces in the coming year.
Dr. Manzardo has focused on the human aspects of irrigation management, in the formation, organization, training and strengthening of WUAs. His background and training has focused much of his work on developing appropriate communications tools for fostering the active participation of stakeholders in successfully managing their own resources.
