Integrating water and forest management in Nepal

Managing natural resources effectively is crucial for the poor people who depend on them. However, it is often difficult to successfully integrate the management of different resources.

There is agreement amongst Nepal’s national policymakersthat an integrated approach is required for water and forest resources.However, management is often segregated into different sectors, which createconflicting policies.

Research from the Comprehensive Assessment, a projectconducted by the Consultative Group on Integrated Agricultural Research, examinesthe integration of forest management and irrigation management in the hills ofNepal. The research focuses on the 580 hectare Begnas Irrigation Project andthe 40 hectare Bhanu Shera Irrigation Project.

An important development is the decentralisation ofnatural resource management into Water Users Groups (WUGs) and Forest UsersGroups (FUGs). In the cases studied, agriculture is the main activity and morethan 50 percent of the cultivated land is irrigated. Over 25 percent of theland is forested. The majority of households are poor, with smallland-holdings, and therefore dependent on the natural resources managed bylocal WUGs and FUGs.

Key findings include:

• Water and forest resources are managedseparately. This is because the location of the resources and people involvedoverlap but do not coincide exactly. Also, the problems for each resource aredifferent and the government supports the groups differently.
• Each resource has independent decision-makingprocesses, but there is informal interaction between the two management groups.
• The increased availability of irrigation waterhas improved agricultural production and increased employment opportunities forpoor households. However, the benefits are not fairly distributed as onlylandowners benefit directly (those near the start of irrigation canals benefitmost).
• FUGs are more involved in community developmentactivities, and participation in management is fairer than in the WUGs. Both,however, have failed to involve women.

FUGs and WUGs have both achieved strong local influence,but they have not achieved  integratedmanagement. This is partly because both still focus strongly on their ownsector, but also because of conflicts arising from boundary issues and over theuse of overlapping resources. To improve the integration of forest andirrigation management, the authors recommend:

• addressing conflicts surrounding water and landresources by using and supporting existing informal contacts, and involvinglocally elected institutions
• encouraging WUGs to learn from FUGs aboutprotecting users’ rights and sharing benefits
• encouraging FUGs to learn from WUGs aboutworking with external agencies and coordinating their activities
• addressing unequal benefits from resources: forexample, poor households’ access to irrigation needs improving and farmers needhelp to adopt new water management practices.