How land, water and
other resources are used in upper parts of catchments can affect
the quality and availability of water, and in turn the livelihood
options, available to people living downstream. These upstream-downstream
interdependencies, which occur at many scales within watersheds,
mean that coordinated management of resources by individuals and
communities can make everyone better off. Yet, this is often hard
to achieve in practice. Information about the nature and extent
of hydrological interdependencies is often lacking, as are the
institutional arrangements that provide the individual and collective
incentives for equitable and sustainable water management across
scales.
Because of
the key role that upper catchments play in maintaining hydrologic
function, and because of the uncertainty surrounding the impacts
of different land uses, it is tempting to manage upper catchments
primarily for conservation. However upper catchments in the tropics
are often home to large numbers of people, many of them poor.
Upper catchment communities are often economically, politically
and culturally marginalized, and their limited livelihood options
center on exploitation of natural resources such as land, water,
and forests. Therefore, equitable management of upper catchments
must include productive use of resources by local populations.
Achieving this requires appropriate productivity-enhancing technologies
and land use options.
In practice,
a combination of both appropriate technologies and institutional
arrangements that compensate the providers of environmental services
offers the best chance for achieving sustainable and equitable
management of catchments. Developing, adapting and scaling up
these technological and institutional innovations form the core
of Theme 2’s research agenda.
Documents
Last
Update: July 25, 2008
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