Watershed Management in Action-Lessons learned from Field Projects-FAO 2017.pdf

WATERSHED

MANAGEMENT

IN ACTION

Lessons learned from FAO field projects

This study reviews the achievements, and also the shortcomings, of 12 watershed management projects technically supported by FAO over the past decade, with a view to learning from experience. Unlike sectoral development approaches, watershed management involves examining the interactions among various natural processes and land uses and managing land, water and the wider ecosystem of the watershed in an integrated way. Watershed management is best carried out as a stepwise multistakeholder process. The review identifies a sequence of steps that watershed management projects or programmes should ideally follow. The approach has demonstrated its effectiveness for responding to global challenges of water supply, land restoration, climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and fighting hunger. The study results suggest that future watershed management projects and programmes must be implemented over longer time frames, and they require sustained and coordinated investment from the public and private sectors. The review identifies the following areas for moving forward: institutional strengthening for improved watershed governance; watershed monitoring; capitalizing on increased data availability;

knowledge sharing and learning; and strategic partnerships for joint action on the ground.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Viale delle Terme di Caracalla

00153 Rome, Italy www.fao.org

I8087EN/1/11.17

ISBN 978-92-5-130014-5

9 7 8 9 2 5 1 3 0 0 1 4 5

W

ATERSHED M

ANAGEM

ENT IN ACTION

Lesson s learned from

FA

O fi eld projects

FA

O

WATERSHED

MANAGEMENT

IN ACTION

Lessons learned from FAO field projects

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Rome, 2017

Cover photos: ©Thomas Hofer

Recommended citation: FAO. 2017. Watershed management in action – lessons learned from FAO field projects. Rome.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned.

The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of FAO.

ISBN 978-92-5-130014-5

© FAO, 2017

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This publication has been printed using selected products and processes so as to ensure minimal environmental impact and to promote sustainable forest management.

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Foreword ..................................................................................................................................vi

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................vii

Acronyms and abbreviations ....................................................................................................viii

Executive summary ...................................................................................................................ix

Key recommendations ...............................................................................................................xi

SETTING THE SCENE

Global challenges and the need for integrated approaches

Watershed management as an integrated landscape management approach

FAO’s work on watershed management since 2006

About the study

Projects included in the study

ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

Policy, legal and regulatory framework

Institutional dialogue and collaboration

Capacity development

Capitalizing on experience and communicating results

Finance and investment for watershed management

SELECTION OF THE AREA FOR LOCAL INTERVENTIONS

Type of management unit

Size and number of selected watersheds

Selection of watersheds: process and criteria

FROM PROJECT BENEFICIARIES TO WATERSHED STAKEHOLDERS

Identifying beneficiaries and target groups

Mobilizing stakeholders

ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE AND TRENDS IN THE WATERSHED

Actors involved

Assessment strategies, processes and tools

Collecting the right information for use in watershed management planning

CONTENTS

iv

FROM PROBLEM ANALYSIS TO POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

AND A TERRITORIAL VISION

Identifying areas for intervention

Analysing problems and identifying solutions

Priority setting

THE WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PLAN

Formulation

Validation

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation of the watershed management plan

Implementation of area-based activities

WATERSHED MONITORING

Establishing a monitoring system

Selecting appropriate indicators

CONCLUSIONS AND THE WAY FORWARD

Building on global momentum: relevance of watershed management in addressing major global challenges

Issues for the future

REFERENCES

ANNEXES

Annex 1. Glossary

Annex 2. List of project documents

Annex 3. Further reading

Annex 4. Project fact sheets v iv

BOXES

Box 1. Twelve principles of watershed management

Box 2. Underlying commitment needed for effective watershed management

Box 3. Capacity development: definitions

Box 4. Adjustments during project implementation: the case of Pakistan

Box 5. Types of community-based organizations

Box 6. Potential intervention areas in the watershed

Box 7. Format of the watershed management plans in the OUBAME project

Box 8. Planning of micro projects in the Chimborazo project

Box 9. Support to vicuña management as an economic alternative to cattle grazing

FIGURES

Figure 1. Land cover in 1975 and 2010, Morocco

Figure 2. Hazard map of Batora watershed, Pakistan

Figure 3. Present land use and localization of project activities, Kyrgyzstan

TABLES

Table 1. Overview of the projects included in the study

Table 2. Watershed management units and main characteristics

Table 3. Overview of project locations, watershed areas and populations

Table 4. Overview of criteria applied by projects for the watershed selection

Table 5. Analysis of priority problems, their causes and proposed activities in the Pakistan project (from the Gulmera Watershed Management Plan)

Table 6. Problems and development needs identified and solutions suggested by villagers in Telman, Kyrgyzstan: results of participatory rural appraisal

Table 7. Problems and development needs identified and solutions suggested by technical experts and local government representatives in Kyrgyzstan

Table 8. Summary of the watershed management plan for the Oued Outat watershed, Morocco, as agreed by all partners

Table 9. Changes that can be attributed to project action in the Oued Outat watershed, Morocco, 2010–2014

Table 10. Changes that can be attributed to project action in the Oued Barbara watershed, Mauritania, 2010–2014 vi

FOREWORD

A decade ago, FAO presented the results of a global review of watershed management projects carried out between 1990 and 2000. The new generation of watershed management programmes and projects, published in 2006, reflected the increasingly wide acceptance of watershed management as an integrated approach to environmental protection and development, addressing conservation of water, land and biodiversity resources and improvement of local livelihoods through enhanced and diversified production. The publication identified new perspectives and ideas for future interventions.

In the intervening years, FAO has formulated and implemented many new projects in which the new approaches to watershed management have been tested and demonstrated. This study is a comparative review of 12 such projects, carried out in as many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It represents an attempt to bring together and disseminate the lessons that can be learned from these projects, their achievements and their difficulties.

Based on the experiences of these projects, the publication provides detailed recommendations for use by practitioners working on watershed-related programmes, projects and initiatives at the national, subnational and local levels. We hope that the publication will also be of value to managers and planners involved in other integrated landscape management and natural resource planning and restoration initiatives.

To meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), strategies are needed to tackle persistent inequalities in the poorest economies, where development needs and dependency on natural resources are greatest. The need to address the SDGs simultaneously calls for integrated approaches aimed to achieve coherence in policies and actions across scales, from local to global, and across multiple sectors.

Watershed management is one such integrated approach, supporting collaboration across sectors, scales and actors to balance competing needs and generate simultaneous benefits for people and the environment.

The watershed management approach advocated in this publication is in line with FAO’s holistic approach for addressing complex and interconnected challenges and for achieving coherence between the Organization’s strategic documents and the 2030 Agenda, to which food and agriculture are central.

FAO’s work on watershed management is directly aligned with the five principles for sustainable food and agriculture, which balance the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability:

improving efficiency in the use of resources; managing natural resources and ecosystems sustainably;

protecting and improving rural livelihoods and social well-being; enhancing the resilience of people, communities and ecosystems; and promoting innovative, effective and responsible governance mechanisms of both natural and human systems.

By adhering to these principles, watershed management promotes the transition to more sustainable production systems and practices in the crop, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors, while preventing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. It reflects FAO’s vision for sustainable food and agriculture – a vision of a world in which nutritious food is accessible for all and natural resources are managed in a way that maintains ecosystem services, functions and biodiversity to support current and future human needs.

Hiroto Mitsugi Assistant Director-General FAO Forestry Department vii vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T his publication was prepared by Petra Wolter under the overall guidance and technical supervision of Thomas Hofer, Team Leader, Water and Mountains, in the FAO Forestry Department. The report benefited greatly from the technical contributions of Luca Fè d’Ostiani and the supporting work of Tomás Gonzáles Ginestet and Robert Nylander. A number of other FAO experts across technical departments and regions reviewed drafts of the report and provided technical inputs throughout the preparation process: Samantha Abear, Nabil Assaf, Faizul Bari, Paul Boettcher, Turi Fileccia, Johanna Flores, Simon Funge-Smith, Viorel Gutu, Li He, Fawzi Karajeh, Andrey Kushlin, Damiano Luchetti, Jorge Meza, Hivy Ortiz Chour, Catrin Promper, Marlos de Souza, Elaine Springgay and Ekrem Yazici.

The following external experts and watershed practitioners from intergovernmental, governmental and non-governmental agencies and the research community are gratefully acknowledged for their substantial contributions, comments and recommendations on several drafts of the study: Lorenzo Bosi, Louise E. Buck, Volli Carucci, Abdelkrim El Majoudi, Don Gilmour, Charles Kenny Jordan, Benjamin Kiersch, Thomas Kohler, Rajan Kotru, Josef Krecek, Neil Ladell, Rima Mekdaschi Studer, Grant Milne, Frits Ohler, Rikke Olivera, John Parrotta, Isabelle Providoli, Isabella Rae, Sanginov Sanginboy, Keshar Man Sthapit, Andrew Taber, Larry Tennyson and Kumar Upadhyay.

Many thanks also to Andrea Perlis for editing the document, Kate Ferrucci for graphic design and layout, James Varah for proofreading and Antonella Sorrentino for overall administrative support.

Special thanks are due to Gorta–Self Help Africa for its financial support.

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ADWAC Agency for the Development of Women and Children (the Gambia) CHPC Chimborazo Provincial Council (Ecuador) CIG common interest group CODEP Community Oriented Development Programme (Zambia) CSO civil society organization EU European Union GADPCH Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado de la Provincia de Chimborazo (Decentralized Autonomous Government of the Province of Chimborazo, Ecuador) GEF Global Environment Facility GIS Geographic Information System GIZ German Agency for International Cooperation GSHA Gorta–Self Help Africa HCEFLCD High Commission for Water and Forests and the Fight Against Desertification (Morocco) ICIMOD International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature LADA Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands LPFN Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative M&E monitoring and evaluation MAGA Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (Guatemala) MEDD Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (Mauritania) NGO non-governmental organization NWFP non-wood forest product OUBAME project name derived from Oued OUtat in Morocco, Oued BArbara in Mauritania and Río MEmbrillo in Ecuador PAHO Pan-American Health Organization PIDD Chimborazo Development Investment Project (World Bank) PRA participatory rural appraisal PROMAREN Proyecto de Manejo de los Recursos Naturales de Chimborazo (Ecuador) PSC Project Steering Committee SDG Sustainable Development Goal SENAGUA Secretaría Nacional del Agua (Ecuador) (now Secretaría del Agua) SMART specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats TCP Technical Cooperation Programme (FAO) TFCG Tanzania Forest Conservation Group TIKA Turkish International Cooperation and Coordination Agency UN United Nations UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification UNDP United Nations Development Programme VDC village development committee WMC watershed management committee WOCAT World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies WRI World Resources Institute ix viii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

T his study reviewed the achievements, and also the shortcomings, of 12 watershed management projects technically supported by FAO over the past decade, with a view to learning from experience. These projects were implemented in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ecuador, the Gambia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia.

FAO defines a watershed as the geographical area drained by a watercourse, and watershed management as any human action aimed at ensuring the sustainable use of watershed resources.

Unlike sectoral development approaches, watershed management involves examining the interactions among various natural processes and land uses and managing land, water and the wider ecosystem of the watershed in an integrated way. It combines measures that improve or conserve the ecosystem services and functions in the watershed (mainly those related to water); increase land productivity and resource efficiency; and improve or diversify people’s livelihoods and income. By integrating these measures in a well-defined geographic space and time sequence, the approach is expected to deliver multiple benefits, both on and off site and in the short and longer term.

Watershed management is predominantly relevant for upland areas, where smallholder agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry are the prevailing land-use systems and where human action has an impact, positive or negative, on downstream areas. Mountain watersheds provide a wide range of ecosystem services and goods such as freshwater supply, high biodiversity, timber, food, fibre and medicinal plants; yet the inhabitants of these areas are disproportionately poor and vulnerable to climate change and natural hazards.

Watershed management is best carried out as a stepwise multistakeholder process. The project review identified a sequence of steps that watershed management projects or programmes should ideally follow. The structure of this publication is based on these steps:

f promoting an enabling environment (policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, institutional dialogue and cooperation, capacity building, sharing of results, and finance and investment);

f selecting the area for interventions – the size, number and location of watersheds – based on appropriate criteria;

f identifying target beneficiaries, mobilizing actors and fostering multistakeholder participation;

f assessing the state and trends in the watershed – biophysical, socio-economic and institutional – using a variety of scientific and participatory methods and tools, to establish a baseline for defining interventions and monitoring future results;

f bringing together the stakeholders to analyse the problems in the watershed (using the results from the assessment phase), to identify solutions and to prioritize potential interventions;

f developing a watershed management plan, formulated through a collaborative process and validated by all stakeholders, to ensure holistic planning, resource allocation and implementation;

f implementing activities on the ground, establishing a balance among the competing needs, demands and priorities of different stakeholders within the available resources;

f monitoring to measure the changes in the state or condition of the watershed and to track the performance of the project against its objectives, based on an appropriate set of environmental, social, economic and institutional indicators.

For each of these steps, project results have been reviewed and a set of lessons learned and recommendations developed. They are summarized in the following “Key recommendations”.

Overall, the projects covered in the review had the greatest effects on the ground, at the watershed level. They invested strongly in capacity development, in setting up and facilitating participatory x processes and in engaging stakeholders from different sectors and segments of the population, including indigenous people, local communities, youth and women. They demonstrated effective collaboration across sectors (forestry, agriculture, water and others) at the district or municipal level.

The projects were less successful at the national policy level, in fostering inclusion of the watershed management approach in regular policy-making and planning and in ensuring the sustainability of project action beyond the immediate intervention area. Because it is difficult for fragmented, small-scale, short-term projects to influence higher level policy- and decision-making, opportunities must be sought to undertake larger-scale and longer-term transformative programmes that can generate qualitative changes in the well-being of populations and in the conservation or restoration of terrestrial ecosystems. The growing momentum around landscape initiatives and the call for integrated approaches for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals provide opportunities for increasing the visibility of watershed management in the global development arena.

Watershed management is an effective approach for responding to global challenges of water supply, land restoration, climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and fighting hunger. To meet these challenges, the next generation of watershed management projects and programmes must be implemented over longer time frames, and they require sustained and coordinated investment from the public and private sectors. In particular, the review identified the following areas for moving forward:

f Institutional strengthening for improved watershed governance. Based on sound analysis of underlying policy and institutional challenges and the causes of resource competition in the watersheds, future projects should support strategic planning and institutional coordination processes and create incentives for multistakeholder dialogue and action platforms.

f Watershed monitoring. Priority must be given to systematic and regular collection and analysis of data on conditions in the watershed. Technical guidance and tools are needed to support the selection of appropriate indicators and develop stakeholders’ capacity to monitor processes in watersheds. Such efforts may be supported by a framework being developed by FAO and its partners for monitoring forest and water interactions in landscapes and the water-related ecosystem services provided by forests.

f Capitalizing on increased data availability. More systematic use of increasingly available geospatial data and tools may complement on-the-ground assessments and contribute to the improved quality of environmental information while reducing time and costs.

f Knowledge sharing and learning. A platform for systematic sharing of watershed management experiences, approaches and tools among development partners and research organizations could avoid duplication of effort, help future programmes take advantage of the latest knowledge, and contribute to harmonization of terminology and approaches.

f Strategic partnerships for joint action on the ground. Given the comparatively small size of FAO projects, their impact can be enhanced through association with larger investment programmes. The World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the regional development banks have programmes in watershed management and can be important partners providing technical support and guidance for responsible investment in watersheds. Such strategic collaboration could be further expanded to include international organizations working on broader landscape management and restoration initiatives.

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KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

� Review policies and laws in relevant sectors such as water, agriculture, forestry, and rural development, during project formulation and/or assessment.

� Promote safeguarding of legitimate tenure rights.

� Promote dialogue among and within institutions and sectors to support horizontal and vertical integration.

� Establish mechanisms for interministerial collaboration and coordination and for systematic upward communication of locally tested integrated solutions.

� Build capacity of both individuals and organizations, based on assessed needs.

� Strengthen skills in leadership, strategic and integrated planning and the fostering of a territorial vision among stakeholders.

� Foster establishment of formal watershed management training programmes, incorporating up-to-date research findings and tools.

� Support global, regional and national knowledge sharing and exchange.

� Join forces with development partners engaged in watershed management or other integrated landscape approaches as well as with universities and research centres.

� Plan and budget for communication and documentation of results, case studies, success stories and lessons learned.

� Present the experiences and results of watershed management interventions in national and global discussion fora, including technical conferences.

� Seek finance for integrated activities in watersheds from multiple sources, and develop new financing mechanisms that can overcome the shortfalls of sector-based approaches.

� Encourage resource partners to support long-term watershed management programmes in preference to short-term projects.

WATERSHED SELECTION

� Choose the watershed as the basic management unit for the coordinated management of multiple natural resources.

� Use a nested approach, to analyse spatial relationships over a sufficiently large area while concentrating interventions in a core demonstration area.

� Take advantage of previous experiences to identify which watershed sizes and scales are best for upscaling and replication.

� In small projects focused on demonstrating the watershed management approach, concentrate field activities in one watershed.

� In larger projects, determine the number and size of watersheds based on the available human and financial resources.

� In selecting watersheds, use criteria such as representativeness, visibility and accessibility;

evidence of watershed degradation and physical restoration potential; diversity in land-use pattern, products and problems to be addressed; demonstrated interest of stakeholders;

demonstrated commitment and support from government line agencies and local entities; and the need for protection of high-value areas downstream.

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ENGAGING WATERSHED STAKEHOLDERS

� Perform a careful and inclusive stakeholder analysis early in the project.

� Identify target beneficiaries based on transparent criteria, distinguishing clearly between direct and indirect beneficiaries.

� Identify specific actions with each group of beneficiaries under each relevant output.

� Foster inclusion of young people as key project beneficiaries.

� Engage field facilitators or community mobilizers to ensure continuous engagement of local populations.

� Involve students from local universities in field activities for mutual benefits and to cultivate future watershed management champions and leaders.

� Where the socio-political environment is conducive to a formalized governance structure, establish watershed management committees (WMCs) to foster multistakeholder participation.

They should be a product of stakeholder negotiation and should build on existing structures, without duplicating their functions.

WATERSHED ASSESSMENT

� Carry out a multidisciplinary assessment of the watershed situation and trends to understand the main issues at stake, establish a baseline and adapt solutions to the local context.

� Involve technical staff of decentralized government offices in the assessment exercise to foster their ownership of the collaborative process.

� Select external technical experts, if needed, based on practical field experience rather than academic qualifications.

� Keep the time frame for the assessment phase short enough to leave sufficient time for subsequent planning and implementation.

� To keep the watershed assessment short, consult existing documentation from ongoing or previous programmes and projects in the area.

� Collect only those data needed for the analysis of main issues and the design of possible solutions.

� Focus the assessment on water and the key degrading influences in the watershed.

� Analyse existing land, water and forest tenure systems to identify drivers or obstacles to investment in watersheds.

� To ensure inclusiveness, use participatory mapping and analysis tools.

� Incorporate new tools for assessing the value of ecosystem services and the costs of loss and damage, and modern geospatial tools for speed and cost effectiveness.

� To build the trust and engagement of watershed populations, identify a few “no-regret” actions for early implementation.

� Have the assessment validated by the watershed stakeholders.

IDENTIFYING OPTIONS AND SETTING PRIORITIES

� Develop different scenarios of future land-use and land-management options based on the information and data collected during the assessment.

� Involve watershed stakeholders in problem analysis, identification of options and delineation of potential areas for interventions.

� Raise stakeholders’ awareness of alternative land-use options that could be more favourable than current practices.

� Focus on the articulated priorities of local stakeholders and on those problems or land-use conflicts that need an urgent solution.

� Plan a mix of short-, medium- and long-term interventions and environment- and development-focused interventions.

� For physical conservation measures, accent bio-engineering soil and water conservation measures whenever viable.

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� Prefer collective benefits over individual benefits.

� Assess the economic and institutional feasibility and the environmental and social risks of the proposed solutions.

� Identify local organizations that can ensure continuity after the project ends.

THE WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PLAN

� Focus the watershed management plan on water to facilitate coherent interventions.

� Harmonize the watershed management plan with existing municipal or communal development plans.

� Establish synergies with sectoral programmes and plans of relevant technical line agencies.

� Only prepare a watershed management plan if human and financial resources are available for its implementation.

� Where local development plans are in place, consider enriching these plans rather than developing separate watershed management plans.

� In the plan, rely as much as possible on tables, diagrams and maps, keeping the narrative sections as short as possible.

� Organize a high-level workshop for formal validation of the plan by all concerned technical agencies and authorities.

� Distribute the final validated plan to all stakeholders.

� Adjust the plan periodically; this is necessary for all plans, regardless of their vision, scope and quality.

IMPLEMENTATION

� Maintain a long-term perspective and engagement for implementation of the watershed management plan.

� Promote sharing of implementation responsibilities among relevant stakeholders from early in the process.

� Implement the plan by sector and through annual work plans.

� Target each intervention to the needs of specific beneficiary group(s).

� Seek coherence in providing inputs and obtaining contributions from beneficiaries across development interventions.

� Where possible, develop incentives and mechanisms to compensate for the provision of ecosystem services by upper parts of the watershed.

� Ensure effective procurement procedures for timely provision of inputs.

MONITORING

� Prepare a monitoring and evaluation plan to organize regular data collection, processing and analysis.

� Monitor not only outputs (for evaluation of project performance), but also the multiple processes in the watershed.

� Combine scientific monitoring of complex interactions with participatory monitoring of some easy-to-measure biophysical parameters by local communities.

� Strengthen monitoring capacities and skills at all levels.

� Foster a transition from short-term project-led monitoring to long-term stakeholder-led monitoring.

� Develop a set of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound) indicators that will make it possible to establish the watershed baseline and set project targets.

� Include indicators of performance changes in organizations involved in watershed management and indicators of changes in the environment resulting from project action.

� Use monitoring as the basis for knowledge management, learning and communication of project experiences and achievements.

©Thomas Hofer

Pakistan

SETTING

THE SCENE1

GLOBAL CHALLENGES AND

THE NEED FOR INTEGRATED

APPROACHES

To address the complex and interrelated problems that the world is facing – including climate change, population growth, urbanization, water scarcity, sustainable food and agricultural production, hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, gender equality and peace and human security – in 2015 the international community agreed on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets which together represent a global plan of action for people, the planet, and prosperity in the twenty-first century. The SDGs are universal (affecting developed and developing countries alike), are interlinked (no one goal is separate from the others) and integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. The SDGs are becoming the main reference for national development policies, plans and programmes, and they will shape the future of international development cooperation.

None of these global challenges can be addressed by one organization alone or by a single-sector programme.

They require strong collaboration and integrated approaches to ensure coherence in policies and actions across institutions, sectors, disciplines and scales and to bring about coordinated responses.

While the challenges are global, the 2030 Agenda must be implemented primarily at the local level to reduce vulnerabilities and build resilient communities. Multi-pronged strategies are needed, especially to tackle the persistent inequalities within and among the poor local communities and economies where development needs and dependency on natural resources are greatest.

Managing collaborative action and planning at the landscape scale is an increasingly popular approach for balancing local needs and global challenges and addressing both environmental protection and food production goals.

Integrated landscape management unites features of broad stakeholder participation, negotiation around objectives and strategies, and adaptive management based on shared learning (Scherr, Shames and Friedman, 2013). The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative defines a landscape as a socio-ecological system that consists of natural and/or human-modified ecosystems and is influenced by distinct or unique ecological, historical, economic and socio-cultural processes and activities

(LPFN, 2015).

Landscape approaches to natural resource management are not new (see Reed et al., 2016). In fact, watershed management has a long history of addressing complex problems and providing solutions that support integration and collaboration across sectors, scales and actors to balance competing needs and generate simultaneous benefits for people and the environment.

WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AS

AN INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE

MANAGEMENT APPROACH

FAO (2007) defines a watershed as the geographical area drained by a watercourse, and watershed management as any human action aimed at ensuring a sustainable use of watershed resources. These resources are dealt with through an integrated ecosystem approach centred on the understanding of the overall interactions between biotic (including humans) and abiotic factors. Inequalities among communities in terms of their socio-economic status and their access to water and other resources and services as a consequence of their geographical location are best addressed at the watershed level.

Watershed management provides a framework for understanding and reconciling the interconnections among various land-use systems and for collaborative action and decision-making in the face of competing claims on resources, especially water resources. Based on a sound analysis of present conditions and dynamic processes in the watershed, a medium/long-term vision is developed which allows for the design and implementation of a

SETTING

THE SCENE1

SET TING THE SCENE

1combination of measures aimed at preserving ecosystems and biodiversity, optimizing resource productivity and improving human livelihoods and well-being. As shown in this review, watershed management is highly context specific but also highly flexible and adaptive to different fields of application and scales of implementation.

Watershed management is predominantly relevant for mountain areas, which represent 22 percent of the Earth’s land surface area and are home to 915 million people.

Smallholder agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry are the prevailing farming systems in these areas. Mountain ecosystems host 25 percent of terrestrial biodiversity and have global significance for the supply of freshwater. They provide a wide range of other ecosystem services and goods such as timber, food, fibre and medicinal plants.

They store water, carbon and minerals, support nutrient cycling and regulate water flows, climate and fresh air.

But mountains are fragile ecosystems, highly susceptible to erosion, landslides and other natural hazards, and mountain people are disproportionately affected by climate change and seismic activities, including earthquakes.

The living conditions in mountains are characterized by a harsh climate, rugged and steep terrain, poor soil quality, limited availability of arable land and limited access to markets, services and basic infrastructure. FAO (2015a) has shown that 39 percent of mountain populations in developing countries are vulnerable to food insecurity, against a global average of 12 percent.

Severe land, soil and watershed degradation is widespread in mountain areas, provoked by unsustainable management practices, misuse and overuse of finite natural resources and fuelled by a development paradigm that incentivizes exploitation for short-term economic goals instead of long-term sustainable investment. Global challenges, including climate change, deforestation, overgrazing and natural disasters, are affecting mountain areas in an unprecedented way, exacerbating poverty and triggering social tensions, outmigration and depopulation due to the competition for increasingly scarce resources and the lack of investment. The acknowledgement of the globally important goods and services provided by mountain regions is not matched by the attention they receive in policy-making and investment.

FAO considers watershed management an important means to trigger investment in mountain areas and thereby make a significant contribution to meeting the intertwined global challenges of protecting and restoring terrestrial ecosystems (SDG 15), combating climate change and its impacts (SDG 13), ensuring sustainable water management (SDG 6), ending poverty (SDG 1) and achieving food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture (SDG 2).

At the same time, it must be acknowledged that watershed management, like other approaches to integrated landscape management, has some inherent challenges, including: identifying the appropriate scale for interventions and delineating boundaries; selecting technical and methodological elements to define what constitutes integration; handling uncertainties that iterative negotiation processes among stakeholders may bring about; and measuring multiple benefits and impact.

Watershed management includes actions at the national, subnational and local levels. Sound national policies and efficient institutions are essential to set up a coherent normative framework that guides the preparation of local arrangements and interventions in a consistent way. Development assistance can provide a safe operating space to demonstrate and field-test innovative practices, approaches and forms of cross-sectoral collaboration for the sustainable management of natural resources and to facilitate adoption and uptake by local stakeholders through national programmes. Strong evidence from field experiences and implementation-oriented research (Liniger et al., 2017) is needed to influence policy dialogue, decision-making and investment priorities at the national level. However, incorporation and institutionalization of successfully tested practices, approaches and collaboration models in national policies, strategies and programmes and adoption of a country-wide investment framework for watershed management to achieve transformational change in the long run are largely the responsibility of government authorities.

Watershed management is predominantly relevant for mountain areas, where conditions are harsh and environmental degradation is widespread (Morocco)

WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN ACTION – LESSONS LEARNED FROM FAO FIELD PROJECTS

The international community can support such in-country processes through the development of new financing mechanisms that focus on integrated approaches and that encourage coordinated investment in well-designed long-term initiatives in specific landscapes or watersheds. Tapping into climate finance could be a promising pathway for mobilizing additional funds and stimulating investment for integrated watershed management. Together with support for global knowledge sharing and stronger coordination among international agencies, integrated area-based (as opposed to sector-based) development and climate finance could make an important contribution towards achieving multiple SDG targets (LPFN, 2015; Reed et al., 2016).

FAO’S WORK ON WATERSHED

MANAGEMENT SINCE 2006

Between 2002 and 2005, FAO and several international partners carried out a global stocktaking exercise to review the knowledge and experiences accumulated in watershed management projects from 1990 to 2000 and to identify new perspectives, ideas and approaches for future interventions. The results were published in The new generation of watershed management programmes and projects (FAO, 2006). It reflected the awareness that watershed management had become widely accepted as an integrated approach combining environmental protection and development through conservation of water, land and biodiversity resources and improvement of local livelihoods through enhanced and diversified production.

The English version of the 2006 publication was reprinted twice, translated into Spanish in 2007 and French in 2008 and made available online in the three languages.

More than 6 000 hard copies have been distributed, and since 2012 over 8 000 online views have been registered.

A readership survey in 2011 found that the large majority of readers appreciated the product, learned from it and were using it in the design, adjustment or implementation of watershed management projects and programmes.

However, the survey also revealed that the publication may not have reached its main intended target audience – field-level watershed management practitioners and local decision-makers at the district or municipality level – suggesting a potential gap between the applicability of the book and its actual application in the field.

Moreover, watershed practitioners have expressed some difficulty with the conceptual subtleties indicated by the variety of adjectives preceding the term “watershed management”. While the shift from “participatory” to “collaborative” watershed management is generally appreciated (the latter including all stakeholders, not just rural communities, thus focusing on negotiation of trade-offs between conflicting interests), the shift from “integrated” to “embedded” watershed management (which addresses only those socio-economic aspects that are directly linked to natural resource management and environmental issues, while overall sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation goals are addressed in collaboration with broader sustainable development processes) has proved difficult to explain and has so far not been taken up by the community of watershed management practitioners. Over the past few years, therefore, FAO has reverted to using the simple term “watershed management” without a modifier.

The findings and recommendations of the 2006 publication were translated into 12 key guiding principles that are being promoted and increasingly applied in FAO’s own watershed management field projects (Box 1).

Apart from these principles, FAO has not developed any methodological framework to guide the conceptualization of watershed management and its operationalization in field projects in a standard way.

In the intervening decade FAO has formulated and implemented several new projects. These projects represent an important testing ground for new approaches to watershed management. However, the experiences, lessons learned and difficulties encountered in one project have not been easily available for personnel associated with

BOX 1

Twelve principles of watershed management

1 Treat underlying causes (not just symptoms) 2 Generate scientific evidence (don’t rely on common myths) 3 Adopt an integrated approach (multisector, multistakeholder and multiscale) 4 Ensure holistic planning and implementation

(watershed management plan) 5 Seek innovative low-cost solutions and co-financing 6 Ensure that institutional arrangements are in place 7 Combine bottom-up and top-down processes 8 Combine traditional knowledge and technical advice through action research 9 Reflect upstream–downstream linkages and compensate off-site effects 10 Strive for gender balance in decision-making 11 Include capacity development at all levels 12 Instil a flexible, adaptive long-term approach to planning and financing

Source: T. Hofer, unpublished

WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN ACTION – LESSONS LEARNED FROM FAO FIELD PROJECTS

1other projects. Each project has responded to the specific needs and motivations of the individual countries that requested FAO technical assistance and the requirements of specific resource partners that provided the funding.

This study is an attempt to bring together the knowledge from these recently implemented watershed management projects through a comparative review.

ABOUT THE STUDY

PURPOSE

This study collects and analyses lessons learned from recent watershed management projects implemented under the technical supervision of FAO and gives recommendations on the way forward in watershed management. By reviewing the design and the implementation modalities of these projects, the study examines the experiences and captures the lessons that can be learned, identifies good practices and provides guidance and recommendations for other watershed management practitioners and for the development of future watershed management projects.

The use of lessons learned is a key element of effective project management, continuous learning and adaptive management. The systematic collection, sharing and dissemination of lessons learned and knowledge derived from past experience helps to avoid repeating the same mistakes and contributes to improved project design and performance through adoption of proven good practice.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The publication is designed for practitioners working on watershed-related programmes, projects and initiatives at the national, subnational and local levels, including staff working in technical departments (i.e. agriculture, forestry, water, rural development and planning) of governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international development cooperation agencies. It will also be useful for managers and planners involved in other integrated landscape management and natural resource planning and restoration initiatives, and for technical experts including natural and social scientists from the private sector, academia and research. The document will be of interest to institutions that work at the intersection of conservation and development in a multidisciplinary way, that promote cross-sectoral collaboration and that facilitate multistakeholder planning and monitoring processes.

STRUCTURE

These chapters of the publication reflect the ideal sequence of steps in a watershed management project or programme, and correspond broadly to the main phases in the standard project cycle, from assessment to planning to implementation and monitoring:

f the enabling environment for watershed management, i.e. the policy, legal and institutional framework required for the smooth implementation of watershed management projects and to ensure their sustainability;

f the area of local watershed interventions: the size, scale and number of watersheds selected and the criteria used for their selection;

f the forms of social organization and how to engage the stakeholders in the watershed;

f multidisciplinary assessment of the state and trends in the watershed, covering the biophysical, socio-economic and institutional dimensions;

f envisioning the future by building scenarios and designing potential solutions;

f narrowing down these options and translating them into a set of feasible priority actions selected for implementation;

f the formulation of the watershed management plan, which is the result of the analytical, planning and negotiation process;

f formal validation of the watershed management plan by all stakeholders before it can be implemented;

f implementation of the watershed management plan – how and by whom;

f watershed monitoring, i.e. the monitoring of the activities set out in the watershed management plan for implementation.

For each step, the text presents the results from the review of individual projects, the lessons learned from these projects and a set of recommendations for future action by watershed management practitioners and project developers.

These steps do not necessarily occur in the chron-ological order given. Watershed management is an iterative process which allows continuous learning from experience and adaptation to changing circumstances. It is not a rigid step-by-step procedure, and some steps or elements of the planning process are often carried out simultaneously. Preferred options for implementation can be narrowed down at the same time that problems and potential solutions are discussed, for example. Not all projects analysed for this review followed all the steps.

In particular, some have not embarked on the preparation of a watershed management plan.

METHODOLOGY

The study is based on a systematic desk review of available project documents, including project progress reports, consultants’ reports, reports from contracted partners, back-to-office reports, project…