Approaches of Watershed Management | Geography

In this article we will discuss about the approaches of watershed management.

1. Participatory Watershed Management:

In order to make the watershed development/management work successful the people participation is very important. The people must be of that particular watershed area which is under consideration for management. This has now been fully implemented by the government itself. The Participatory Watershed Management (PWM) approach has been proved to be beneficial in different forms.

The main benefits are summarised below:

i. The management of natural resources becomes possible by the associated landowners/communities residing in the watershed.

ii. Alleviation of poverty of rural mass becomes easily possible.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

iii. The overall development of rural families gets achieved by this approach.

iv. There develops a kind of coordination amongst people of different communities.

v. The speed of work progress gets increase.

vi. There develops a kind of friendship amongst the rural mass of the watershed; by virtue of which the rural mass can do any kind of development work in the watershed, themselves.

In brief, the participatory watershed management practice enables the communities to remove the problems and achieve better control over natural resources and livelihoods of watershed. Literature revealed that in many countries, the participatory approach has developed the way for success of most of the watershed based management programmes. In India, especially in tribal areas this approach has created a kind of sense about better art of living amongst tribal people. By participatory approach a kind of awareness is also developed in them about their strength to do impossible works.

In Thailand many cases of successful watershed management programmes have been reported based on the participatory approach; and also illustrated how the PWM improve the livelihoods. The local communities should be collaborative, innovative and holistic to raise the awareness, protect, rehabilitate and manage the areas sustainably with the support and facilitation of different organizations.

Various objectives of PWM are outlined as under:

Objectives:

In watershed management programme the main objectives of participatory approach are given as below:

i. To see how the local people could get involve in management of watershed; and how the activities make contribution in their livelihood strategies.

ii. To witness the collaboration amongst a diverse group of stakeholders; and also to evaluate/examine various challenges faced by the communities.

iii. To develop learning awareness amongst rural communities on various aspects such as traditional forest management, natural resource management and community networks.

iv. To develop learning awareness about integrated approaches of watershed management.

v. To create awareness that how the policies can affect the watershed management.

vi. To make interaction amongst local communities.

vii. To review the challenges of participatory watershed management practices.

2. Adaptive Watershed Management:

A managed watershed involves balanced economic condition of human mass and ecosystem, because of the reason that there is long-term protection and restoration of natural resources in sustainable manner. In watershed there may be a variety of problems and constraints to remove them. There may be the problem on water aspect (quantity and quality).

Nowadays, the whole world is facing the water-based problems, either it is in terms of its availability or quality. The land uses in watersheds directly affect the quantity and quality of water availability. In this respect, the smart land development strategies are very effective, but they encourage inappropriate land use.

The mission watershed management has developed a norm to provide assistance with following aims:

i. To lead and encourage the development of interdisciplinary research and adaptive procedure, integrally informed understanding of social-ecological systems at the watershed level.

ii. To transfer the knowledge amongst stakeholders.

iii. To create collaborations amongst partners, sponsors and clients.

iv. To decide mechanism for creating adaptive capacity and sustaining the ecosystem services in human- impacted watersheds.

v. To work with stakeholders, citizens, action groups, industry, academia, state, federal and local govern­ments and the general public in identifying the watershed problems and seeking sustainable solutions, to generate knowledge that can serve as a resource for the people.

The adaptive watershed management follows the principle of landscape ecology in its work on watershed-wise resource management and planning. This approach simultaneously emphasizes to understand the ecological, social and economic consequences of changes in urban and rural land use in context to watershed. Different elements of watershed can be integrated into adaptive management strategies to achieve more sound land-use and sustainability in economic and natural resources.

In adaptive watershed management, to protect and restore the valuable watershed natural resources, the following measures can be taken into consideration:

i. Classification of critical watersheds for fixing priorities regarding their conservation based development of land-use diversity and management strategies.

ii. Identification of critical threats such as surface and groundwater pollution, soil erosion, poor eco-system etc. to protect the valuable resources and establishments of watershed.

iii. Development of recommendations in light of watershed management to ensure sustainable and good quality water availability and to maintain the productive aquatic resources.

iv. Identification of system-wise controlling processes and mechanisms to distinguish environmental indicators for evaluating eco-system health.

v. Formulation of recommendations on land-use impact mitigation, habitat restoration programs, and other remediation techniques in watershed disputes.

vi. Evaluation of socio-economic values of watersheds and their environmental services for policy development and management planning.

Also, the followings are few important actions require to perform under integrated watershed assessment:

i. Investigation of interaction mode amongst land-use patterns, community practices, water users and industries to formulate actions regarding equity, participation and water resources sustainability for multi-watershed users.

ii. Development of management protocol for sustainable restoration of eco-system of coastal watersheds with recommendations to evaluate the restoration efforts based on the process/parameter indicators.

iii. Application of remote sensing technology to evaluate the success of eco-system protection goals.

iv. Formulation of multi-disciplinary team, assuming the responsibility for effective use of water resources, informations need research and community-based environmental protection activities.

v. Design of strategies for coastal watersheds to emphasize enhanced vegetal buffer area between upland and coastal water.

vi. Development of provisions for technical advice on sedimentation control, forestry and range management, water conservation management, design of wastewater treatment facilities and dissemination system for technical informations.

vii. Facilitation of people’s participatory approach for integrating water resource decision-makings.

viii. Conducting conflict resolution processes to develop consensual use of water resources amongst competing stakeholders; and recommendation of institutional arrangements to achieve adaptive integrated watershed management.

People’s Participation:

The people participation and their collective actions are very important to carry out the watershed management works in effective manner. The government of India has formulated the norms of watershed management, in which people participation has been given priority to ensure success of watershed manage­ment task. The people’s participation based watershed management is also termed as participatory watershed management.

The basic elements of participatory watershed management are mainly as under:

i. Sustainability

ii. Equity; and

iii. Participation.

In watershed management a sustainable people’s participation refers to throughout involvement of people in such a way that the work progress could not get affected. In other words, the rate of work progress should be in sustainable form. It could be achieved by creating awareness in the people; creating interest about water­shed management work; making awareness about importance of watershed management and its forthcoming advantages to the society so that there would be a good participation of people living in the watershed.

The equity refers to creation of equitable access to livelihood resources for the watershed community. This feature makes the management progress, sound.

The participatory approach ensures sustainability in the watershed management works. The people’s participation makes effective utilization of available resources in the watershed. In real sense, the people’s participation provides a kind of volunteer sharing by the peoples in terms of their time, energy and money for the development programmes, in addition to adopt the recommended measures and practices in sustainable ways.

Sustainability:

Sustainability of participatory watershed management can be in the following heads:

i. Socio-cultural improvement.

ii. Economical improvement; and

iii. Environmental/ecological improvement.

The socio-cultural improvement can be achieved based on the following points:

i. Decision making power in the community.

ii. Empowerment of women.

iii. Formation of fanner groups/Self Help Groups.

iv. Change in ownership of land.

v. Improvement in quality of life.

vi. Harmonious social life.

The economic sustainability can be gained based on the following considerations:

i. Increase in income level.

ii. Availability of food and fiber security.

iii. Improvement in standard of living.

iv. Off-farm income to families.

v. Improvement in rural economy.

vi. Improvement in credit and market supports.

The environmental factors include all those factors which affect the community ecology. The increase in productive potential of resource based management of common property resources, and improvement in bio-diversity are the part of environmental factors.

3. Community Watershed Management:

A watershed is the area from which all water drains to a common point; and also making it suitable for technical efforts to manage the water and soil resources. The size of watershed depends on the topographic and agro-climatic conditions; it may range from few hundred to several thousand hectares.

The watershed is a land unit with unevenly distributed diverse natural resources within its boundary. The watershed acts as a connect­ing media to spatially separated different communities. In watershed the exploitation of its resources varies depending on the community.

A watershed, if includes different topographical elevations, i.e., lower, middle and upper elevations within its boundary, then certainly there is non-uniformity in level of socio-economic condition of the people living. In this condition, there is likely to get develop a kind of interdependence between watershed resources and user communities associated to the upper, middle and lower reaches of the watershed. Also, there is difference in actions of one group to the others resulting into effects on work progress of watershed management.

Watershed management aims to implement the improved natural resource management systems for developing or improving a better livelihood amongst the people living in the watershed; and at the same time promoting beneficial conservation, sustainable use, and management of natural resources inside watershed.

The Integrated Watershed Management (IWM) is the approach with suitable strategy for improving the soil productivity and intensification of agriculture in sustainable manner. In this regard, the Government of India has formulated the strategy for integrated development of rural communities, especially in rain fed and drought-prone areas in the country.

The IWM includes multi-crop and livestock-based income strategies that support and diversify the livelihood opportunities for the poor rural mass, and create synergy between targeted technologies, policies and institutions to improve productivity, resource use sustainability and market access.

In order to have a better result the investment in IWM should be with active cooperation amongst stakeholders at different levels. Also the collective action occurs only when individuals voluntarily cooperate as a group to coordinate their behavior to solve a shared problem.

The collective action refers to the action taken by a group. The action may either be directly or on its behalf through an organization. The collective action can be made more effective by formulating and implementing the rules and condition in favor of members’ expectations to achieve their common goal. The resource management and livelihood activities in rural areas may be the important components of this task.

In integrated watershed management the need for collective action depends very much on the resource types, degree of spatial integration and the time required for attaining the desired outcomes. The collective action becomes more important in the regions/area, where the related institutes/organizations are either not there or not functioning properly for management of natural resources on which the livelihoods of poor rural mass depend.

Up to a large extent the success of community based watershed management activities in sustainable form are the function of exhibiting proper rules, ability to monitor behavior and punish violators, existence of mechanisms for conflict resolution, and forum for negotiating future courses of action.

The initiation and development of sustainable collective action depends on the socio-economic conditions of the communities and biophysical and socio-economic settings. The heterogeneity in ethnicity, religion, and social class affects the speed of management progress. For example – the inequality in wealth status and community size reduces the management coordination.

The watershed management also provides livelihood support for the society. The natural resources existing in the watershed affect it to a large extent. Management of these resources requires institutional mechanism/facilities for proper monitoring and decision taking.