Browsing by Author "Ravindranath, R."

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Evolving Spaces in Landscape Management: Linking Spatial Information for Effective Decision-Making
(2004) Ravindranath, R.; Singh, Subrata
"Community, in the policy context, is defined on the basis of fixed in place socio-political unit having residential proximity to the resource or according to state recognized political units. With the boundaries drawn at the village level and the custodial rights of the common lands vested with various departments of the state, it is difficult on the part of the communities to manage such resources. With the advent of participatory forest management powers have been devolved to the communities for protection and use of the resources. Apart from the institutions at the village level, many of the discussions in recent times have focused on the need for nested institutions at various levels to help conserve and protect large landscapes. "The need for nested institutions emerges to resolve conflicts and work towards reshaping the boundaries to establish stable governance of the resource. Despite the regulated use of the resources by community institutions, the resources have tended to get degraded gradually. Conservation of large landscapes requires mechanisms to bring in equilibrium the demand and supply within and among the communities in the larger socio- political setting. These institutions in many circumstances feel incapacitated to understand the entire landscapes and assess the quality and the availability of the resources and therefore take decisions based on the 'who is right' and not 'what is right'. "The protection and use posits a need for 'means' to understand the entire resource base to take decisions effectively. Geographical Information System (GIS) technology is one of the widely used tools to assist in the management of larger landscapes in terms of forest conservation, pastures, water resource management and wildlife management. The integration of both spatial and non-spatial data allow users to efficiently and effectively make well-informed decisions using visual aids and three-dimensional models that simulate the environment. This paper discusses a participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) with community forest management groups in India and the importance of putting people before technology in order to make GIS a truly participatory process in landscape management. The process of dialogue can lead to better information and more transparency about community needs, strategies and the problems at stake."
Investigation of the Impact of Commonland Protection on Water Resources in Rural India using Hydrogeological Methods
(2011) Matz, D.; Moysey, S.; Ravindranath, R.
"Sustainable watershed management plans must view groundwater as a common pool resource for which stakeholders have a shared responsibility for both development and protection. While hydrologic monitoring methods and water balance models are commonly used to develop plans for managing the demands on water within a watershed, it is less common that these techniques are applied to understanding the impacts of commonland conservation and management activities. This lack of practical and quantitative tools for assessing the impacts of communal management activities may therefore erode the long-term community support for such activities. In this study we present a case study where simple monitoring strategies and volume balance methods are applied to understanding the impact of artificial groundwater recharge from a percolation pond in the Salri watershed of Madhya Pradesh, India. The percolation pond is formed by a dam constructed by villagers on commonlands to capture monsoon rainfall. Water seeps from the pond into the subsurface to be stored in aquifers downstream of the dam until it is needed in the dry season. We use a simple water balance model constrained by changes in water level in the pond to estimate the volume of water contributed to the subsurface from the pond as a result of the 2009- 2010 monsoon to be about 1.3x105 m3 , or about twice the volume of the pond at its peak capacity. The volume of water contributed to groundwater by the pond is about 7% of the total rainfall occurring within the entire watershed or almost 30% of rainfall falling directly upstream of the dam. The pond also affects surface water flows in the watershed as flows immediately downstream of the dam run through November, whereas significant discharge at the outlet of the watershed ceased by the end of September. If it is assumed that the water captured by the dam would have previously been lost from the watershed as surface flow during the monsoon, then the intervention has reduced runoff from the watershed by about a factor of 1/3. This study shows that simple monitoring and modeling techniques makes it possible to determine the impact water harvesting has to conserve water resources and help improve the commonlands."
The role of Participatory Hydrological Monitoring in Groundwater Governance: Towards Evolving Informed Adaptative Mechanisms
(2008) Ravindranath, R.; Sharma, Varun
"Groundwater issues have become prominent since last three decades due to the erratic rainfall pattern, irregular supply of surface water flows and growing demand for agriculture, industries and for other domestic requirements. Alongside many basins are already closed or on the verge of closure. With increasing scarcity of water, Groundwater has become all the more important for the agriculture and for the livelihoods of the people. Consequently, the stress on groundwater has been increasing tremendously and it has been over exploited in the last couple of decades, which lead to the deterioration of the water table at an alarming rate and causing environmental hazards in some places. Semi arid regions are the worst affected due to the deepening of water levels in wells. "Many localized initiatives have been launched to address water scarcity; however, these developmental programmers are improving situation at local level without the perspective of basin flows at a larger level, thus leading to upstream and downstream conflicts sometime within a village or community due to the slag in supply and demand status of the resource. The problem of course, is that groundwater has been not treated as a common pool resource. This is compounded by the fact that there is also a lack of knowledge on base flows, which depend on the aquifer properties rather than on the administrative divisions, and some times the flows could be across villages, tehsils, districts and even countries like surface water. "In order to address these issues much technological advancement happened in the last two decades in understanding the hydrological aspects of the resources. However, it would have no value unless these innovations are practiced. Community could only adopt these technologies only if these are robust and user friendly. Government and non-government organizations have initiated a few attempts. At the outset, the participatory hydrological monitoring is a good solution to curb the groundwater depletion and managing the resources in a sustainable manner. "This paper talks about the management of groundwater resources by communities adopting various regulatory mechanisms and assessing the status of the resources with robust methods and utilizing the resources more sustainable across community."