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Abstract:
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"In the Indian development policy context there is increasing concern about why community-based natural resource management projects fail to achieve their expected levels of equity or sustainability (Saint, 1995; Kerr, 1996). Such community-based approaches are themselves a departure from earlier policies which tended to be based solely on state priorities, treating natural resource management as a technical and administrative issue, rather than a socio-economic and political one (Pretty and Shah, 1996), and focusing on large-scale projects such as large dams, reservoirs and canal systems (CSE, 1985). The high social and environmental costs of such schemes, now well- documented, have been an important stimulus in a shift evident since the 1980's towards small-scale community based projects.
"In this context, donors, governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGO's) are currently investing heavily in participatory watershed development. Widely cited project examples include the Sukhmajri project (Chopra, 1990) and the Relagaon Sindhi Project (Deshpande and Reddy, 1991). NWDPRA is a well-funded endeavour undertaken by central and the state governments with the objective of involving people in project planning, implementation and maintenance, over 99 districts in 16 states. World Bank-funded integrated watershed development projects have also been launched, covering 94 watersheds.
"Emerging critiques of such projects highlight how, for instance, farmers are used as labourers for construction or the interests of the weaker sections of society are overlooked so that they bear the labour burden of the projects for little benefit (Sharma, 1995). Some schemes have floundered in the face of local resource conflicts. In other cases, farmers accept otherwise unsuitable programmes because they offer a short-term source of income and access to subsidies, but resource management efforts are not sustained beyond the departure of the implementing agency (Sanghi, 1987; Pretty and Shah, 1996). Many of these problems can be traced to the misleading assumptions about 'community' and 'participation' informing these approaches. Certain commentators are now urging the need for greater attention to local ecological specificity, social organisation and institutions in natural resource management in the Indian context (e.g. Mosse, 1997).
"This paper focuses on a community-based watershed project in Rajasthan to provide a better understanding of how social, institutional and ecological dynamics affect practical efforts to achieve community-based sustainable development. The paper applies the tools of environmental entitlements analysis in a project evaluation mode to explore how people's different endowments and entitlements to natural resources, as influenced by institutions, affect their experience of watershed development interventions. The paper also considers whether social actors' differential abilities to overcome the transaction costs that they face make it viable for them to invest in institutions and environmental management in the ways expected by the project."
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