Water harvesting and watershed management: Social impacts and distributional consequences of policies and processes

Since 2010 investments in the rehabilitation of rivers, lakes, and wetlands have increased, and in many places they now help restore the environmental goods and services these ecosystems provide. Through various means, including artificial wetlands and vegetated buffer strips along riverbanks and lakeshores, domestic effluents and agricultural runoff are controlled and purified. Empowered communities and individuals, both women and men, regularly participate in all levels of decision making on water resource management. Local involvement and coordination with stakeholders was an important element in all assessments. Now more equitable conditions give local communities rights, access to, and control over land, water, and other resources. Laws, markets, and regulations increasingly recognize local people's rights and needs, making possible the sustainable use of natural resources and reconciling livelihood needs with ecosystem functions and requirements. The present paper deals with Watershed management and it is characterized by a variety of possible interrelationships between productivity, conservation and poverty alleviation, in the use of natural resources. Since conservation efforts usually result in higher productivity, at last at the local scale, it has become a popular poverty management approach. This paper discusses the evolution of watershed development in India and their implementation in the Karnataka State of India. It traces the historical growth of thinking on watershed development and improves the irrigation and rural drinking water facilities. The review shows that success in watershed development projects is usually isolated, mostly seen in small micro-watersheds with naturally good water harvesting conditions in North Karnataka Districts. Overall, the watershed management and rain harvesting in Karnataka region have been vastly disproportionate by the policy makers and supported agencies in implementation of watershed development projects and lack of awareness with rural communities for effective management of water and renewable resources. Gaps in the understanding of technical aspects between government and other agencies is to be improved, changing livelihood and land use patterns, and upstream-downstream linkages continue to undermine possible impacts along with rain fed north Karnataka which is considered as drought prone area with dry land through the year.