Our Earth used to be abundant in environmental resources. This resource base was, and still is the backbone of our economy, nationally and globally. For times immemorial, these God-gifted resources have been providing food, shelter, and other necessities to human life. Nature has been generous to humans. And the humans started exploiting the generosity of nature.
This started the advent of modern development processes. The man has become more and more greedy. He wanted to extract all the eggs of this hen (nature), laying golden eggs. In the process, he started killing the hen, without caring for the future. And now we can see the result – recurring droughts & floods somewhere, massive soil erosion & landslides somewhere, degraded forests, and water scarcity. This led to various ecological, social, and economic problems.
At this juncture, several socio-economic problems have to be squarely addressed by any ecologically conscious man. The question is “How can we have Ecologically Balanced Development with the justice to Man & Nature”. However, before we answer this question, we must have a clear perception of the magnitude of the socio-bio-economic issues that have emerged from the dynamics between man’s increasing demand for various requirements and the decreasing per capita availability of the same.
Any attempt towards alleviation of poverty and the creation of employment necessarily needs to address the problems of effective and optimal management of land and water in an integrated manner. We have sufficient natural resources to support a respectable life standard to its citizens, provided their utilization pattern is optimized and management streamlined.
The need is more of watershed management as a framework of integrated, viable, and decentralized pattern of development of people living in the degraded area where water is a mismanaged resource, and where exploitation of resources and people have resulted in overall degradation leading to growing poverty, inequality and inability to cope up with stress.
Watershed is a recognized approach of development and management of three basic resources of a nation, viz., land, water, and people. The approach evolved, over the last many decades, initially with the focus on economic stability and wise use of these basic resources. With increasing emphasis on social and community aspects in the developmental policies all over the world, planning, and implementation of watershed development projects on both social and economic aspects of community life of watershed dwellers has gradually assumed significance.
Here, “Watershed management” is used to cover the physical, economic, social, cultural, structural aspects of survival and poverty towards increasing the sustainability capacity of the rural community.
Taking into consideration, the past work experiences, watersheds are logical planning and management units from a sustainable and environmental viewpoint. Therefore the approach should be developing land from the ridge to the valley to harmonize economic development and environmental protection.
“Sustainable development” is the development which is:
- Ecologically balanced/ sound
- Socially just/ acceptable
- Economically viable
- Technically feasible
Appropriate watershed management policies can contain these trends and help secure water supplies. They also reduce flood damage and increase land productivity and upland conservation. The alternative approach for land, water, human resources, and biomass energy leads to such a model of equitable and sustainable development. Watershed development can increase groundwater percolation, while preventing soil erosion and promoting greater biomass growth.
When the environment gets degraded, the quality of life of the human community within the region also goes down. Management of environmental resources thus aims at the renewal of the environment in an integrated and comprehensive manner. A more viable approach to resource development and management requires the full involvement of communities in planning to implementation and management.
While planning at a macro level and acting at the micro-level, we have to keep in mind that design should prevent land and water degradation. The situation necessitated conservation, regeneration, and the judicious use of all the resources related to the environment for sustainable development.
While the Human Resource Development and Capacity Building is to be focussed on all stakeholders. This is meant for facilitating the process, participation, technology development, and responsiveness of the institutional setup.
As per the International Water Council, some major rules have been defined by Resource Management in its present form. All of us should understand that natural resources should be managed without any kind of conflict. There should be co-operation between the people, governments, and different companies involved in the management of natural resources. Another aspect that needs to be taken care of is that Natural Resource Management makes use of technology. Therefore, it is important to state that technology should be employed to develop better methods. People should update the technology to make the processes more efficient.
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