Participatory Watershed Development: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century - Hardcover

Farrington, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195651359 ISBN 13: 9780195651355

Publisher: OUP India, 2000

Synopsis

Efforts have long been made in India to improve the management of major watersheds for ecological reasons - such as reducing the siltation of reservoirs. The management of micro-watersheds (of around 500 hectares) is a more recent focus of policy and has both ecology and livelihoods as its objectives. Experiments have shown that, in some areas, more than a doubling of resource productivity can be achieved by careful rehablitation. Many watersheds contain both private and common land. It is already clear from a number a efforts led by NGOs that, to be equitable and institutionally sustainable, the rehabilitation of both common and private lands needs action rooted in strong resource user-groups capable of taking decisions in a participatory way and resolving conflict. To build up groups in this way requires both time and skills, both of which have proved elusive in government projects and programmes. The key question addressed in this book is how far the approaches developed by NGOs can be adopted (or adapted) by the public sector and applied on a wide scale, for, without such approaches, neither the ecological nor the livelihood benefits of watershed rehabilitation will be achieved.

About this title

About the Author

John Farrington and Cathryn Turton are Research Fellows at the Overseas Development Institute, London. A. J. James is an environmental and natural resource economist, working as an independent consultant, based in New Delhi.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP India
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195651359
• ISBN 13: 9780195651355
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400