Introduction

For development to be environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable, there is a need to go beyond sectoral approaches to meeting the challenges of today. There is a need to adopt an approach that explores a long-term multi-sectoral perspective in a given area. Taking a watershed, river basin, or catchment framework is a way to promote such multi-sectoral perspective in a spatial, hydrologic context. This would require recognizing upstream-downstream dimensions and sectoral interconnections (e.g. deforestation upstream increasing erosion and sedimentation in downstream storage, reducing their live capacity and hence the services they can provide in the form of hydropower, irrigation, water supply or environmental and community water services) in a long-term framework (e.g. climate variability looking back exacerbated by climate change looking ahead and changing landuse and population and development drivers of change).



The physical and development setting (e.g. in the Himalayas or the Sahara Desert or the Mekong Delta) and different scales of such watershed systems – ranging from transboundary river basins such as the Nile, Ganges, Aral Sea or Amazon; to micro-watersheds above a check dam – bring their own complexities that require customized approaches.

The interactive map below shows a sample of watershed or basin type of projects financed by the World Bank. These projects often promote integrated multi-sectoral approaches in a spatial, hydrologic context, with varying use of modern information and analytical tools.





An integrated watershed approach requires a more holistic appreciation of several multi-sectoral aspects (e.g. climate, surface and ground water resources, topography, soils, land cover, infrastructure, population distribution and occupations, livestock distribution, cropping patterns, pollution sources and water quality, biodiversity, development challenges and opportunities, etc.), their interaction, and change over time. All this requires consideration of spatial and temporal data and a range of analytical tools to model the natural systems from various perspectives relevant for planning, allocation, or real-time operations (e.g. water balance, systems analysis, erosion and pollution modeling, weather forecasting, historical climate and climate change analysis, scenario analyses, etc.).

Historically, especially in the developing world, it has been extremely difficult to understand the complex linkages in a holistic context primarily due to challenges in the information and institutional context. The relevant data is often fragmented, often not fully computerized or even close to real-time, with poor quality, coverage, documentation, and access especially in the public domain. Few tools are used to analyze and visualize the data to convert it to information, knowledge products and feed into decision support processes. Weak institutions with very limited capacity and poor partnerships, lack of convergence of the entities responsible for various overlapping and fragmented sectoral and spatial mandates, and poor processes for meaningful stakeholder engagement, further constrain the effective use of information and tools. All this then contributes to often haphazard and uncoordinated opportunistic investment development, poor performance of investments, and lack of sustainability.

Today, the situation is more encouraging. Several institutions at local, national, regional, and global levels have painstakingly curated a range of relevant data and made these more robust and accessible. Earth observation from a growing fleet of increasingly powerful satellites with constantly improving sensors are providing revolutionary often global regularly updated perspectives of the world around us. Information and communication technologies have completely revolutionized the way in which data is collected, transmitted, analyzed, stored, shared, accessed, and visualized. A new generation of socially and professional networked young professionals with more cutting-edge skills can be found in every nation on earth as education and access to global good practice improves. Institutions are getting better networked and there staffed by people with more opportunities to grow professionally with continuous learning.

Looking ahead, there is even more cause for optimism that can hopefully help tackle the looming development needs, rising expectations, and climate challenges. The price for vastly improved in-situ sensors, satellites, UAVs, cloud computing, and mobile and computing devices is dramatically dropping as the world prepared to usher in an era of the internet of things. Global good practice is a rapidly moving target spurring nations to learn faster from each other and spur further innovation, application, replication, and scaling-up.

However, it is unfortunately true that very few working in the developing world are aware of how to benefit immediately from the dramatically changing world around us. This has resulted in limited access to global good practices of even yester-years, and a strong belief that their world does not have any relevant data or analytical tools unlike their counterparts in the more developed world. For watershed management, this has meant that few have embraced new technologies and tools, and continue to do watershed management like it was done in the last century, with minor and patchy, albeit appreciable innovations along the way. There is a need to facilitate everyone to be able to learn quickly from a rapidly evolving global innovation stage.

This e-book will serve to illustrate some ways in which modern technology available today can revolutionize the way in which we can support more holistic approaches to integrated water and land management in a watershed or basin context at different scales. This first version will focus on data and analytical tools that is already available to support work on any watershed around the world. The focus will also be on indicating data, tools, and learning resources that are free to access as a starter kit for modernizing the way in which we can better understand and analyze the multi-sectoral context of watersheds.

This e-book is expected to not only be a resource to follow along during training and webinars but also as an interactive reference for later use and a mechanism to share the information with others. The interactive nature of this e-book (with embedded pictures, videos, data and mapping services, analytical tools, links, and presentations) is intended to engage users very differently than a static document. In addition, the “live” nature of the e-book (with the ability to access real-time data and the ability to be updated centrally with updated elements, additional case studies, etc.) is expected to save costs, provide economies of scale, facilitate institutional partnerships, and provide an improved user experience for continuous learning and knowledge sharing.