Q1

What kinds of plans are prepared in watershed project? (on what themes / components)

Q2

What any action plans are prepared for developing common property resources in the watershed area?

Q3

Whether CPRs are identified in the village or not? What are they?

Q4

Whether men and women participated in action plan processes of private land?

Q5

Whether action plans are prepared for drinking water for human beings?

Q6

Whether action plans are prepared for drinking water for livestock?

Conservation, development and management of natural resources are important elements of Watershed Based Livelihoods Projects. The strong natural resource base will reduce the vulnerability of watershed communities. Perspective plan will have action plans for every component of watershed program - natural resource development, productivity enhancement and livelihoods. Action plan for natural resources will cover all sub components of natural resource development such as such as common property resources, private lands, water resources (drinking and irrigation), live stock and biomass. APRLP believes in gender and equity based action planning processes. Common property resources are important livelihoods assets for poor. APRLP gives considerable stress on the development of CPRs as part of watershed development program. The guidelines give considerable stress on institutional arrangements for protection and usufruct rights over these CPRs.

• The prioritized project interventions in natural resource management components are water conservation, tree plantation, soil & moisture conservations on private lands (in the order of priority).

• Very interestingly, 50% of projects have livestock related interventions (health and fodder) as part of action plans. This dispels the notion that watershed projects neglected livestock related issues. This intervention could be mainly as a result of livelihoods component in the project budgets.

• The variations among various types of PIAs are not very significant. This explains the uniformity in approach in action planning processes in case of APRLP.

• The significance of common property resources are not clearly pronounced in practice. The data on interventions on CPR is not clearly coming through the field work. About 40% watersheds do not have plans on CPRs (either they did not recognize or did not prepare plans). Remaining watersheds prepared action plans for CPRs. NGO PIA made considerable efforts to prepare action plans for CPRs.

• Through net planning process, wife and husband are consulted in preparing action plans for private lands in all APRLP projects (both categories of PFA). Institutionalization of net planning tool helped to ensure gender integrated action planning on private lands in 60% of watersheds. However, in remaining 40% of projects, men dominated the planning process on private lands.

• Though drinking water was recognized as an important problem, during situation analysis, only 25% of villages actually addressed this problem through action planning. These experiences go beyond watershed project and demonstrate collective action of villagers to address their drinking water problems. Remaining, 43% villages did not make any efforts to address this concern. Surprisingly all APRLP projects, where GO PIA operates the drinking water issues remained unaddressed during planning process.

• In 38% of projects, drinking water facilities are created as part of watershed plans. Though the drinking water scarcity was identified as a priority in 45% of projects, no efforts are made to address the same. There is no variation between APRLP and Non APRLP projects in this regard.