This study investigated a community-managed irrigation system, the Wang hilltop pond irrigation system (WHPIS) in Guangdong, China. Via a field survey and case study, this paper describes the WHPIS’s two-stage process of evolutionary governance since the 1960s. First, it explains how the WHPIS achieved 50 years of successful self-governance and robust operation. Then, based on the requirements for adaptive governance outlined by Dietz et al. (2003), it addresses how the WHPIS, when faced with a climate-anomaly, has achieved robustness through institutional change. It finds that with strong social capital based on lineage events, the community, working in partnership with the local government, collectively revised investment, maintenance, and water distribution rules, and developed a new patroller rule. These new rules were effectively enforced by the community through social capital, which enabled the WHPIS to adapt to the climate anomaly. Last, this study concludes that a long-term self-governing irrigation system disturbed by abrupt change can be restored to a robust state via institutional measures enabling adaptive governance. Strong social capital enables a community to absorb the external power from the local government and internalize it, enforce incremental rule changes, and efficiently achieve a robust irrigation system subject to adaptive governance.
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