Watershed Management

Sustainable is a word that is widely employed to describe a desirable future for the world and its peoples. The simplest definition of sustainability is ‘not cheating on our children’; to that should be added, ‘not cheating on our neighbors’ and ‘not cheating on the rest of creation’. 

Referring to "What We Going to Do" post, out of the five areas, Water Resource Management is going to be focused on the following.

Effective watershed management includes both planning and implementation components. While the development of a watershed plan is a critical step in the process, the plan must be successfully implemented before results can be seen. The watershed management process uses a series of cooperative, iterative steps to characterize existing conditions, identify and prioritize problems, define management objectives, and develop and implement protection or remediation strategies as necessary. (Watershed Management Process, 2012)

To protect the water sources through watershed management, Integrated Watershed Management provides a framework to integrate natural resource management with community livelihoods in a sustainable way. This action area addresses the issues of degradation of natural resources, soil erosion, landslides, floods, frequent droughts and desertification, low agricultural productivity, poor water quantity and quality and poor access to land and related resources from an integrated watershed management perspective. Therefore, we will address the new and upcoming challenges and opportunities for the respective organization and climate change at the watershed level focusing on three eco-regions – humid, sub-humid, and arid and semi-arid areas. 

The approaches include

• Development and implementation of regional research programmes/projects in collaboration with local partners and organizations, regional and research institutes,
• By building on past experience and creating new experience from different Eco-regions, new methods, technologies and options.
• Dissemination and sharing of knowledge through vibrant networks, workshops, training, exposure visits, resource books, how to do manuals, posters, feature articles, leaflets, CD's, multimedia tools and etc.

Objectives

1. To develop, test, and pilot equitable methodologies for watershed services in the region/organization.
2. To develop and test, through assessments and research, suitable watershed management strategies that address adaptation to climate change.
3. To build capacities of watershed managers to help scale up good watershed management practices.
4. To support policy development in integrated use of watershed resources.

Reference List

Watershed Management Process. (2012, March). Retrieved 2013, from EPA: http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/datait/watershedcentral/process.cfm