Hydrology Journal

Many rivers in India are shared resources, flowing through or between more than one province and more than one country. The combined effect of climatic stochasticity, rapid population growth and inefficient water infrastructure is increasing stress on river basin ecosystems. As stresses on river basins continue to increase, water re-distribution schemes are rapidly assuming the status of a ‘growth industry’, but they have a potential for intra-and international conflict and for severe ecosystem perturbation. Despite their high cost and ‘high profile’ in terms of complex engineering and technical inputs that they require, the ecological and social implications of such schemes have been, and continue to be, inadequately addressed. Healthy freshwater ecosystems provide a wealth of goods and services for society, but our appropriation of freshwater flows must be better managed if we hope to sustain these benefits and freshwater biodiversity. This paper will propose a framework for developing an ecologically sustainable watershed management approach, in which human needs for water are met by storing and diverting water in a manner that can sustain or restore the ecological integrity of affected watershed ecosystems. The framework includes: (1) developing initial numerical estimates of key aspects of river flow necessary to sustain native species and natural ecosystem functions; (2) accounting for human uses of water, both current and future, through the development of a hydrologic simulation model that facilitates an examination of human–induced alterations to river flow regimes; (3) assessing incompatibilities between human needs and ecosystem requirements with particular attention to their spatial and temporal characteristics; (4) collaboratively searching for solutions to resolve incompatibilities; (5) conducting watershed management to resolve critical uncertainties that frustrate efforts to integrate human and ecosystem needs; and (6) designing and implementing an adaptive management program to facilitate ecologically sustainable watershed management for the long term. Drawing from case studies to illustrate the framework, this paper hypothesizes that ecologically sustainable watershed management is attainable for a vast majority of watersheds