Sustainability of natural resource management in watershed development project

Abstract

The study was conducted in Bijapur district to analyse the sustainability of natural newlineresource management and its impact on the livelihood of participating families in watershed newlinedevelopment project. Two watershed development projects financially assisted by DANIDA newlineand DFID were selected for the study. One small, medium and big size village in both the newlineprojects and five self help group members and five non self help group members were newlineselected by stratified sampling method constituting the total sample of 240 respondents. newlineVillage level institutions and five self-help groups from each village were also selected for the newlinestudy. The important findings of the study were. The sustainability of Natural Resource newlineManagement was developed. newlineHigher knowledge level (about 70 %) was found in big and small farmers category newlinewhile landless and women members had relatively low knowledge level (60 to 70 %) about newlineNatural Resource Management. newlineThe social, technical and environment sustainability index was around 50 per cent. There was newlineno significant difference in the sustainability index between different categories of farmers and newlinealso between SHG and non-SHG. Small size village was more efficient in natural resource newlinedevelopment and management by exhibiting higher sustainability index. The difference in newlinesustainability index between the villages was significant. Local institutions such as Self Help newlineGroups and village level institutions had shown moderate financial sustainability. newlineThe investigation identified that, family education, land holding, training participation newlineand local institution participation had positive and highly significant association with the newlineoverall sustainability. Overall watershed development interventions had produced significant newlineimpact on the livelihood of the participating families. Some of the constraints expressed were newlinelack of co-operation, slow process and lack of flexibility. The solutions suggested were newlineexposure visits in the beginning, involving local leaders, training and more transparency etc.