Community watersheds for improved livelihoods through consortium approach in drought prone rainfed areas

Rainfed agriculture is important globally (80%)) with varying regional importance (95% in sub-saharan Africa and 60% of the farmed land in South Asia) and is also the hotspot of poverty, hunger, and water stress. Occurrence of droughts is a common feature and the frequency of droughts is expected to increase due to prevailing climate change. Watershed development is adopted as a drought proofing strategy for improving livelihoods. Watershed development approach has evolved from a compartmental approach of conserving soil and water to a holistic and participatory livelihoods approach. The new approach calls for inputs from various institutions and actors for greater impact. ICRISATled Consortium has developed an innovative community watershed management model involving participatory research and development. This approach developed in Adarsha Watershed, Kothapally in India and further scaled out in 368 watersheds in India, China, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam has showed multiple impacts by increasing crop productivity by 2 to 4 folds, doubling the family incomes, enhancing biodiversity, enhancing community resilience to cope with changes including due to climate change, reducing run-off and soil losses, building institutions and developing local capacity. ICRISAT’s experiences and learnings about community scale watershed management through Consortium are discussed