Lessons from Indian Watershed Management Projects
Activity Type:
Activities Related to Cross-Sectoral Cooperation What lessons can other countries of the world learn from successful examples of integrated watershed management in arid zones, rain-fed lowlands, and higher elevation sites in India?
The World Bank's watershed management projects in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Karnataka are recognized as among the better practices examples in the Bank for integrated watershed management in arid zones, rain-fed lowlands, and higher elevation sites. These projects combine participatory micro-watershed planning for soil and water conservation with broader livelihood support programs. Forests are a major part of these projects, both with traditional plantations and horticulture on both private and common lands. Total spending on forestry-related programs represents about 30 percent of the total project budgets. Each project has developed a range of innovative practices that could inform not only larger centrally-financed government schemes in India, but also Bank-financed watershed programs in other countries.
Using the lessons learned from these projects, this activity is developing learning materials in various areas, drawing lessons , and most importantly, offering guidelines that could apply to new programs.
The key areas for developing learning materials include: integrating carbon financing into forestry components; developing and applying state-of-the-art M&E systems; applying simple hydrological planning tools at the local level to rationalize treatments around water budgets and the need to avoid downstream externalities from reduced water flows; community micro-planning processes, effective institution and capacity building, applying R&D and technology transfer to provide farmers with simple methods of improving yields, water management, and pest control; managing common lands through new tenure arrangements; adding rural livelihoods programs to promote equity; and integrating programs through local authorities to complement decentralization programs.
