Institutionalising People's Participation in Natural Resource Management: A Case Study of a Watershed Management Programme in Chittoor District, Andhra

Over the past five years in India’s rainfed lands, the central Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has been implementing a large scale watershed management programme which takes a participatory approach. In Andhra Pradesh (AP) alone more than 8, 000 micro-watersheds (500 ha each) are being managed under this new approach. This programme represents a radical policy shift by government; the role of bureaucracies is confined to a facilitating role, whereas the local community is vested with decision-making powers in programme related administrative and financial matters.
An action research study by the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex seeks to analyse the dynamics of institutionalising participatory processes and approaches for natural resource management by selecting case studies from Senegal, Burkina Faso, India, Indonesia and Mexico. In the case of India, the participatory watershed management programme was chosen the study in Andhra Pradesh.
The aim of our study was to analyse the degree of people’s participation in the watershed management programme, and to identify the conditions (and barriers) for institutionalising participatory approaches for watershed management.