Efficient Management of Water Resources for Improving the Livelihoods through Integrated Watershed Management Approach

Southwest China, administratively covering the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing Municipality, and Tibet Autonomous Region is characterized by mountainous topography, multi-ethnic residents, and poor eco-environmental conditions. Except some parts of Sichuan province, the rest of the region consists of hills and mountains, which occupy more than 90 percent of the land area. Therefore, the cultivated land is very scarce. Most of the non-cultivated as well as cultivated lands are subject to severe soil erosion. Agriculture is a major dependency of livelihoods for the majority of the people in the region, especially in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces. The annual rainfall in this region varies from 1000 to 2000 mm and its distribution is erratic causing frequent droughts because most of the cropping is rain-fed. Agriculture is also the major source of revenues in the river valley areas in the southwest China, with a 44 percent of the social production values, and 54 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Watershed management is one of the important schemes of the Chinese Government in the West Development Strategy. Economic development and improvement of eco-environmental conditions are two main goals of this strategy. The major constraints in this region are severe soil erosion, water scarcity for crop production and land degradation. The National Agricultural Research System (NARS) of China in recent years have developed and evaluated technologies like vegetation restoration, rain water harvesting, and control of soil erosion by different interventions in the research station to overcome the constraints. Since 2003 a collaborative project between International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS) and Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GAAS), funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB), is being implemented in two benchmark watersheds representing two eco-regions, hot-arid valley region in Yunnan province and Karst region in Guizhou province. The major emphasis of this work is harvesting rainwater and its efficient use, control of soil erosion as also by various soil conservation measures in farmers’ fields. As a part of integrated watershed management, many other interventions are being evaluated in order to improve the income of the farmers along with soil and water management interventions