Watershed management

The Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy Miyun project has generated important lessons about the process of working to improve landscapes and livelihoods in a watershed context. This paper documents and shares these lessons. In particular, it summarizes how the project was conceptualized and implemented, how and why this changed over time, and what its key impacts and achievements have been.

This publication brings together case studies, best practices and lessons learned on capacity development aspects of water and the green economy. Contained herein are mainly constributions from UN agencies working together in the inter-agency mechanism known as UN-Water, which look at the characteristics of a green economy and what it will take to accomplish the transition to one with respect to capacity development needs within the water supply and sanitation sector.

Beginning with a grassroots approach to water management, increased knowledge and information and the improvement of environmental health and livelihoods, the region around the Tacaná volcano on the border of Guatemala and Mexico has shown the way forward in scaling up local level approaches to national level initiatives.

Inappropriate water management practices in the Komadugu Yobe Basin, upstream of Lake Chad in northern Nigeria, changed the seasonal river flow and caused widespread environmental degradation. Coupled with this was fragmented regulation and conflicting responsibilities among institutions, a lack of coordination for hydro-agricultural developments, inequitable access to water resources and growing tensions and risk of conflicts among water users.