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Watershed Planning and Assessment |
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SOPPECOM is involved in watershed development related research and some piloting besides constructive engagement with practitioners and policy makers on the importance of sustainable and equitable approaches and strategies for addressing the concerns of rain-fed agriculture along watershed lines. As part of this engagement SOPPECOMhelped set up Forum for Watershed Research and Policy Dialogue (ForWaRD), a collaborative initiative of three institutions, namely, SOPPECOM; Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad and Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED), Bangalore now part of AITREE. These three organisations have undertaken a number of initiatives in the area of watershed research and policy dialogue at national and state level especially in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Most of these efforts followed from the major findings of a comprehensive review of watershed projects in the country by K. J. Joy and Suhas Paranjape. As part of the Forum, the major activities in the area of watershed development undertaken by SOPPECOM are: 1) A desk review of coverage of watershed development projects and their major impacts; 2) A GIS based information/data set on all the micro watersheds in the three states under all major programmes; 3) Rapid assessment of intervention, status of biophysical and institutional assets and outcomes/impacts of the intervention covering 400 micro watersheds from 20 districts of the state of Maharashtra and from seven major modes; 4) Post-facto research of watershed development and its impact on livelihoods, biophysical and institutional indictors. The issue of upstream/downstream hydrology was studied at a sub basin level with catchment of around 45000 ha of area where more than 60 percent of the area is treated. Eight micro watersheds from two different modes were taken up for detailed socioeconomic and biophysical analysis. The study used a multidisciplinary methodology involving different tools and techniques. Use of RS/GIS tools to assess change was inte gral to this study
The findings of these studies were disseminated as research reports and through national level dissemination workshop held in collaboration with CRIDA, Hyderabad. These are also available on the websites of all three institutions. SOPPECOM and ForWaRD were actively involved in the public consultation of the New Common Guidelines (CGL) for Watershed Development through our contribution to Parthasarathy Committee, by organising a national level workshop, along with WASSAN, after the issuance of the CGL and through research articles in Economic and Political Weekly.
Recently SOPPECOM was selected as a resource organisation by NIRD to conduct evaluation of impacts of watersheds in two states namely Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. In Gujarat SOPPECOM worked in collaboration with GIDR. The study covered 135 watersheds from two states. The report is appreciated by the Centre for Water and Land Resources (CWLR), NIRD
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