A watershed management framework for mountain areas: Lessons from 25 years of watershed conservationin Nepal

Abstract

A watershed management framework for mountain areas is based on lessons learned from watershed management experience, social and institutional learning, and the use of a watershed management program evaluation in Nepal. The lessons led to the adoption of a subwatershed-based ecosystem approach based on local participation at the subwatershed level. An integrated watershed management framework (IWMF) consisting of eight steps with three checklists was developed focusing on improvement-oriented adaptive management. The eight steps lead to the preparation of a watershed management plan. In the process three checklists are used. While the first checklist has general questions pertaining to watershed analysis, the second allows participation analysis of stakeholders in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and opens up new prospects for further reinforcing or building new user group institutions based on consensus. The final checklist consists of hierarchical watershed management objectives, including goals, results and activities leading to a program planning matrix. The framework was applied to watershed planning in the Chure Region to compare the framework-based planning with conventional planning procedures. A significant difference in quality and substance of the output, with and without the use of the framework, suggests that an integrated framework is a useful tool for an ecosystem-based approach to natural resource management and socio-technical conservation.

A watershed conservation success story in Nepal: Land use changes over 30 years

“…While there were benefits from structural activities, in economic and livelihood terms they were small, compared to those resulting from the conversion of land use from open grazing to protected pasture and from government forest to community forest. Treating eroding gullies did not result in land use changes and often failed after the first season of monsoon rains (Fleming 1983) Economic analyses of other projects in the Middle Hills of Nepal showed that the costs of building torrent control structures, treating landslides and building embankments in riparian zones far exceeded the economic benefits valued in terms of conserved agricultural land (Achet and Fleming 2006).…”

Review of Collaboration between NMWCP and REDD+ in Supporting Sustainable Forest Management in Papua

“…Associated with distribution of benefits to indigenous community in REDD+ program, it is necessary to introduce knowledge on forestry business to the community as promoted by Tomaselli and Hajjar (2011). Moreover, Cronkleton et al (2011) stated that their study indicate that social forestry management can be an option in the implementation of REDD+ in Mexico, Brazil, and Bolivia.…”

A decision-supporting methodology for assessing the sustainability of natural risk management strategies in urban areas

“…Finding an accurate framework to assess the sustainability level of future and the existing decisions has become an important issue. A review of literature shows that some methodologies and tools are available to assist managers in the sustainable risk management field (Turner II et al, 2003;Freedman et al, 2004;Achet and Fleming, 2006;Kang et al, 2013). However, most of these tools are either specific to a hazard (mostly flood and coastal hazards; see McGahey et al, 2009), based on a mono-criterion approach, considering only one aspect of sustainability (e.g.…”