On May 15, the Ukrainian Agri Council, with the support of the USAID Agricultural and Rural Development Program (AGRO), organized and conducted a webinar "Peculiarities of creating a WUO in the part of the reclamation network. Experience in ordering services for the development of land management documentation".

Practical advice was provided by UAC lawyers and Heads of the newly created WUOs.

"The UAC has been consistently supporting the reform of the WUOs creation, starting with the development of relevant legislation and continuing with support for its implementation, and it does so thanks to the support of USAID. Today's webinar is devoted to the peculiarities of establishing a WUOs in the part of the reclamation network, and we can already talk about the first experience of developing land management documentation," said Yana Buрrimova, advisor to the Ukrainian Agri Council.

Oleksandr Suliaiev noted that USAID has been supporting land reclamation reform in Ukraine for several years and reminded that a manual has been published that can become a handbook for those wishing to create a WUC. The manual can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/4216N07

Mykhailyna Kaparulina, Chairman of the Rule of the WUO “Water-Life”, shared her experience of collecting documentation on the reclamation network for the creation of WUO and communication with government agencies. "For several months we did not understand how to collect the necessary information. We started working in September and decided in November that we would create WUO, and we had been negotiating before that. Everything should be discussed with farmers," says Mykhailyna Kaparulina.

Mykola Nalbandian, the Head of the “PERSHA” WUO, provided basic advice.

"Those who want to create a WUO should read the law carefully and build an algorithm of actions accordingly, which makes communication with government agencies easier. It is important to understand why you are doing this and what the next step will be. In our case, when we were preparing the project, we had a vision of what we wanted to get in 3-5 years, and today we are building communication with all stakeholders accordingly. I would advise the decision-makers to build a strategy for several years, not just one season. It's also good to have a project manager who knows the network, as in our case, it's a completely different pace of work. But the last advice applies to cases where the irrigation system has already been in operation, and not being restored from scratch," Mykola Nalbandian said.

Recommendations on how to act when there are public or private pumping stations on the ground were provided by Mykhailo Khorev, legal advisor to the Ukrainian Agri Council, who emphasized that each case requires a separate approach.