Management Of Upland Watersheds

Income / Environmental degradation / Domestic water / Food security / Watersheds / Decentralization / Institutions

As human populations expand and demands upon natural resources increase, the need to manage the environments in which people live becomes more important but also more difficult. Land and water management is especially critical as the use of upstream watersheds can drastically affect large numbers of people living in downstream watersheds. An integrated approach that stresses both the importance of participatory planning and the institutional and technical constraints and opportunities is therefore necessary. The institutional and technical context for managing watersheds and river basins, including the involvement of both the public and private sectors, is also examined.

An account of hydrology and watershed management, it provides the fundamental information and practical methods necessary for solving water-use problems in a variety of settings and situations - forest or range, agricultural or environmental.

Today, a systemwide approach to watershed resource management is essential. As recent history has shown, the usual mixture of biophysical management measures are often constrained by institutional factors, frequently producing limited results. This book offers important management alternatives, examining this resource problem within an economic framework, using an interdisciplinary approach. Part I introduces the basic economic, biophysical, social, institutional, and policy aspects of watershed management. Part II illustrates specific watershed approaches through selected case studies from Asia and the Pacific.