Watershed Management Through
Stakeholders’ Participation

 

Approximately 170 million hectares in India are classified as degraded land, roughly half of which falls in undulating semi-arid areas where rain-fed farming is practiced. Growing efforts by the state and different kind of stakeholders to reverse this decline are often based on the rehabilitation of micro watersheds.

A watershed can be defined at various levels, at the macro-level (district or regional levels), at the village level (hundreds or thousands of hectares), at the farm level or even within the farm. The micro watershed concept aims to ‘establish an enabling environment for the integrated use, regulation and treatment of water and land resources of a watershed-based ecosystem to accomplish resource conservation and biomass production objectives’.

Traditionally, community based organisations have played an important role in the management of common property resources such as forests, wasteland, water management and community resources, community institution building (Self Help Groups, Common interest Groups, gender development, etc.) for people-oriented development. The encouragement of public participation in agriculture development and management through legislation in recent years has also enhanced the role of NGOs as major groups.

Non Government Organisations (Community based organisations, private and corporate organisations, Panchayati Raj Institutions, etc.) play a key role in assisting government agencies to meet the requirements of community participation, watershed development and large-scale awareness. At these levels, they are concerned with the sharing of experiences, influencing discussions and policy making of regional and international inter-governmental bodies and raising concern over the globalisation process.

Participatory Management in Watershed

The participation of major public interest groups is also being institutionalised through formal representation in decision making and management bodies in watershed programmes. There is equity in the decision making between the government and NGO (civil society) representatives and community in the programme formulation, management, and implementation at the local, regional and national levels. The mandate for civil society participation has also been provided through the development of programmes that facilitate direct community based management of watershed and natural resources, particularly to promote people’s participatory institutions like Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), cooperatives and self help groups. The involvement of the NGO as an operational partner helps to share and resolve conflicts locally in a democratic fashion. It also helps to mobilise direct and indirect contribution (money, labour, material, etc.) as a community fund and to maintain the community assets created during the programme. The local institutions are important in mobilising resources and regulating their uses with the view to maintain a long-term base for productive activity by involving the government agency as a partner.

It is now a widely accepted fact that if the productivity of natural resources is to be enhanced in a sustainable fashion, then those engaged in and affected by management of the resource - the communities - must participate in plans for its rehabilitation and management. Their participation will generate a stake in the process and enhance the prospects of both institutional and ecological sustainability. Despite the ‘feel good’ factor associated with participation, it must be recognised that it is not a neutral concept and involves a set of stakeholders’ who have the decision-making power and access to resources.

Joint Action by the Stakeholders in Watershed Management

The primary stakeholders in the watershed development process include government agencies, NGOs, the private and banking sectors and communities. The government not only provides services related to renewable natural resources but also much of the fabric necessary for the functioning of civil society (in the form of legal and administrative systems).

As local communities gain awareness of their new rights and responsibilities in resource management, there will be an increasing demand for legal, financial, technical and logistical support from the public sector. These growing demands on the state are ironic, given that one of the founding reasons for the decentralisation of natural resource management has been the inability of government departments to manage common pool resources due to insufficient human resources.

Community participation and development requires various channels for managing and implementing resources to the agencies and communities at the ground level. The banking sector, therefore, has a potentially important role to play, although it remains an area which is poorly exploited in the managing natural resource development programme.

NGOs as Project Implementing Agencies (PIA)

The district collector for water management programme in Jhansi district has noted that the greater involvement of NGOs as PIAs has both advantages and disadvantages. Many of the PIAs have got into the act merely to create a base for themselves, as the only qualification required of them is to be registered for three years. Though we do ensure that the right NGO or any other public body is selected for the PIA there are areas where there is no strong NGO presence.

On the other side, there is general dissatisfaction among the NGOs acting as PIAs with the attitude of the government machinery towards them. ‘We are often treated as sub contractors,’ says one vehemently, ‘the special strength of the NGOs is in their social base, but government officials expect us to also take responsibility for the implementation of the works in time and for auditing and submitting all the bills to the government.’

Operationalising Partnerships

One of the main difficulties lies in identifying appropriate roles and responsibilities for the various stakeholders in the natural resource programme. The problems of finding an appropriate institutional ‘mix’ have been noted for donor programmes in general and for natural resource management programme in particular. The appropriate balance of power and responsibility will depend on preconditions such as the extent of conflict endemic within the communities, the existence of entrepreneurial traditions, and the effectiveness of government line departments. For joint action approaches to be successful, there must be agreement on the respective roles of different partners and a shared vision, where all the partners agree on and share common goals and objectives.

Partnerships between the concerned agencies need to be structured, with each playing a role according to its comparative advantage. Governments and research organisations, for example, can provide technical assistance and guidance, economic incentives (especially where resource use generates externalities or the users are the needy), an enabling legal framework with clear territorial rights, formal conflict resolution mechanisms, and financial and technical support for decentralised monitoring. Communities contribute local ecological information, and the knowledge of economic and social conditions, which enables them to devise well-adapted rules and procedures, low-cost customary conflict resolution mechanisms and self-monitoring mechanisms.

Conclusion

The success of participatory watershed development by the different stakeholders, judged according to the extent to which improvements in productivity, are both equitable and sustainable. In future, the major expectation is to strengthen the capacity of all stakeholders, communities, and the state to implement programme at a pace compatible with national development imperatives and the availability of resource. A period of consolidation is called for to allow implementation capacity to ‘catch up’ with the scale and vision of the watershed programme. q

Dr Shailendra Nath Pandey
snpandey@devalt.org

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