BACKGROUND

About US$400 million is spent on watershed development programmes in India each year. Over the last decade, these programmes have worked to alleviate poverty, build up sustainable livelihoods and rehabilitate degraded lands. It is estimated that international donors provide about US$100 million of assistance each year towards rehabilitating India’s watersheds. Of this, the Federal Republic of Germany contributes about 15 million euros per year (US$18 million). A substantial part of these funds goes for environmental protection and sustainable natural resource management. German support for watershed management is linked to its overall support for poverty alleviation and environmental protection, with poverty alleviation as the main focus of its support to watershed-related projects. The rehabilitation of the half of India’s degraded land (170 million ha) located in undulating semi-arid areas is a priority. German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ)-supported projects aim to apply socio-technical solutions for sustainably rehabilitating land and other natural resources in order to enhance productivity and reduce poverty. WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN INDIA Community-based watershed management has become the guiding principle for rehabilitating natural resources in India’s rural areas. Natural resource management in India has evolved from a purely technical, top-down approach in the 1970s, to the current decentralized participatory approach (Box 1). The Ministry of Rural Development’s Hariyali guidelines on watershed development (MoRD, 2003) have given village-level local government – the panchayati raj institutions – a pivotal role in managing natural resources. They now have the responsibility for managing local watershed projects