Kerr_lessons From CPR Theory IJC 2007

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International Journal of the Commons

Vol 1, no 1 October 2007, pp. 89-109

Publisher: Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services for IASC

URL: http://www.thecommons.org

URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-IJC-07005

Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

ISSN: 1875-0281

Watershed Management: Lessons from Common Property Theory

John KerrDepartment o Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource StudiesMichigan State [email protected]

Abstract: Watershed development is an important component o rural developmentand natural resource management strategies in many countries. A watershed is a spe-cial kind o common pool resource: an area dened by hydrological linkages whereoptimal management requires coordinated use o natural resources by all users. Man-agement is dicult because watershed systems have multiple, conficting uses, so

any given approach will spread benets and costs unevenly among users. Theoriesrom commons research predict great diculty in managing complex watersheds andexplain why success has been limited to isolated, actively acilitated microwatershedprojects with a ocus on social organization. Encouraging collective action is easiestat the microwatershed level but optimal hydrological management requires workingat the macrowatershed level. Research suggests potentially severe tradeos betweenthese two approaches. Resolving the tradeos is necessary or widespread successin watershed development but solutions are not clear. Examples rom India illustratethe argument.

Keywords: commons, watershed, India

Acknowledgements: Elinor Ostrom, Arun Agrawal, Frank van Laerhoven, ErlingBerge, and two anonymous reviewers provided helpul comments.

1. Introduction

A watershed or catchment is an area that drains to a common point, and watersheddevelopment seeks to manage hydrological relationships to optimize the use o natu-ral resources or conservation, productivity, and poverty alleviation. Achieving this

requires the coordinated management o multiple resources within a watershed, in-cluding orests, pastures, agricultural land, surace water and groundwater, all linkedthrough hydrology. Watershed development is an important component o many


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90 John Kerr

countries rural development and natural resource management strategies. TheWorld Bank, or example, invested $1.73 billion in watershed development rom

1990-2004 (World Bank 2007), and the Government o India spent over $6 billionrom 1996-2004 (World Resources Institute 2005).

This paper introduces critical challenges to making watershed developmentwork and presents lessons rom research on watersheds and theories about man-aging the commons. Commons theories do not predict that watershed manage-ment can be widely successul, and they explain why most projects operate at asubvillage microwatershed scale. The paper demonstrates tradeos between op-erating at a small, microwatershed scale to encourage successul collective actionversus a large, macrowatershed scale that is more suitable rom a hydrologicalperspective, and it suggests some lessons or policy and practice. The empiricalocus is mainly on India but ndings are more broadly applicable.

Many watershed resources are characterized by high exclusion costs and sub-tractability, the two main attributes o common pool resources.1 Many natural re-sources in a watershed are oten held in common, such as pastures, orests, ponds,and groundwater. Other resources tend to be managed individually, especiallyagricultural land, but also some patches o pasture, orest, and captured runowater. A watershed is dened, however, by the hydrological linkages among allthese resources. Collective action among all watershed resource users is neededto manage hydrological processes or maximum productivity o the whole wa-

tershed system. Through these hydrological linkages, a watershed system is inact a high exclusion cost, subtractable environmental resource, in other wordsa common pool resource that aces typical commons management problems. Incomplex, multiple use commons like watersheds, interests must be balanced bothwithin and across diverse interest groups to generate agreement on regulationsabout resource access, allocation, and control (Steins and Edwards 1999a).

A watershed is a useul hydrological unit but not a natural unit o humansocial organization (Rhoades 1999; Swallow et al. 2001), and the hydrologicallinkages among dierent parts o a watershed oten are not visible beyond verysmall scales. As a result, sel-organization among watershed users is unlikely be-yond the smallest watersheds, and it is dicult to examine watershed governanceoutside the context o a special project or other eort to promote management.2

Accordingly, this paper ocuses primarily on eorts to promote better watershedgovernance where project investments have tried to strengthen the natural re-source base.

1 A high exclusion cost or nonexclusive resource is dicult to exclude others rom using. For asubtractable or rival resource, one users welare is diminished by other users.2 Examples o endogenous watershed management are rare in the literature and invariably concern

very small watersheds with visible upstream-downstream linkages (e.g. White and Runge 1995,Murray 1994).


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91Watershed Management: Lessons from Common Property Theory

It could be argued that upstream-downstream hydrological relationships with-in watersheds are just externalities3 that can be managed through such approaches

as Coasian bargaining,4 command-and-control, or taxes and subsidies. However,especially in developing country contexts characterized by dense population andsmall holdings, command and control, taxes, and land use restrictions are un-enorceable (Pagiola et al. 2002). Coasian bargaining is rarely easible due tohigh transaction costs o generating and enorcing agreement among numerous,dispersed actors.5 The nonexclusive nature o watershed hydrology is what makesmanagement dicult (Randall 1983).

1.1. Watershed terminology

Watersheds can cover areas o any size, because small watersheds are subsectionso large watersheds that themselves can be nested within larger watersheds up toentire river basins. Attention must be paid to what is being described in any givensetting. Oten microwatershed reers to a small area about the size o a village,while macrowatershed reers to something much larger. A casual review o the lit-erature ound discussions o watershed management covering rom two hectares(White and Runge 1995) to 30,000 hectares (World Bank 2007).

Scale can reer to either hierarchy or magnitude (Swallow et al. 2001). Forscale as a hierarchy, a watershed is part o a series o hierarchical relationships,whereby a small microwatershed is nested within a larger watershed, which in

turn is nested in an even larger watershed. As a magnitude, scale reers to size, orexample the number o hectares that a watershed covers or, rom a socioeconomicperspective, the number o people living in it. On the other hand, watershed agen-cies reer to scaling up their operations meaning to replicate their projects overmany locations.

Watershed development and watershed management are oten used inter-changeably. In this paper, watershed development reers to programs with techni-cal interventions (planting trees, building check dams, etc.) to raise the produc-tivity o certain resources and bring water resources under control. Watershed

management reers to managing hydrological relationships in a watershed, whichmay involve protecting certain resources rom degradation rather than makingphysical investments in their productivity. Technical interventions are likely to beruitless without subsequent management. Watershed governance reers to insti-tutional arrangements to guide management.

3 Externalities are unreimbursed costs or uncharged benets accruing to people resulting romsomeone elses actions.4 Coasian bargaining is negotiation among aected parties to resolve an externality in a mutuallyacceptable way, conditional on the cost o the solution being less than that o the problem itsel.5 Coasian bargaining cannot work when there are high transaction costs associated with generatingand enorcing agreement among a large number o actors. I a watershed had only a single occupantthere would be no externality. With only an upstream occupant and a downstream occupant, Coa-sian bargaining would be straightorward. However, transaction costs increase exponentially witheach additional independent actor.


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92 John Kerr

Watershed projects have dierent objectives depending on the perceived natu-ral resource management problem in a given area. In the United States, watershed

management is mainly about protecting water quality. In many areas it is aboutfood control. In hilly, semi-arid areas o India, the ocus is on water harvesting, ortrapping runo during the rainy season or later use when water is scarce. In fat-ter areas with less opportunity or water harvesting, it is more about concentratingsoil moisture to raise rained agricultural productivity. In virtually all watershedprojects, soil conservation is either a specic objective or a means o achievinganother objective. This paper ocuses primarily on projects that harvest water andconcentrate moisture, which are widespread in areas with seasonal water scar-city.

2. What watershed projects aim to achieve

Watershed projects in developing countries that ocus on water harvesting andsoil conservation typically state three objectives: 1) conserve and strengthen thenatural resource base, 2) make agriculture and other natural resource-based activi-ties more productive, and 3) support rural livelihoods to alleviate poverty. Therst objective builds the oundation or the second, which in turn supports thethird.

In seasonally dry areas where watershed projects ocus on water harvesting,the natural resource base in question typically includes soil, water, agriculturalland, pastures, and orests. Surace water bodies may also support small sheries.Steps to strengthen one o these natural resources inevitably aect others and thelivelihoods that depend on them. Watershed projects typically begin by investingin soil conservation in the upper watershed. Upper watersheds oten are hilly, withpasture or orest land use rather than agriculture. In such cases, soil conservationtypically involves increasing vegetative cover since bare ground is more proneto erosion. This involves planting new vegetation and making the area o-limitsto grazing animals. Water harvesting involves building small dams to captureruno rom upper watersheds ater heavy rains. Reducing erosion reduces silt in

runo water and in water harvesting ponds, thus lengthening their liespan. Waterharvesting in turn benets arms urther down the slope by providing irrigation,either via surace water or by recharging groundwater.

These interventions are designed to eventually raise the productivity o allnatural resources in the watershed. Soil becomes more productive or agriculture,water is captured or irrigation, and pastures and orests yield more biomass. Alllivelihood activities that depend on these resources may be enhanced, and em-ployment may increase as agriculture becomes more productive and additionallabor is needed or harvesting and other operations. One important point is thatimprovements in dierent natural resources have dierent durations. Water har-vesting or example can begin almost immediately but orests and pastures taketime to yield increased biomass, and they are o limits to grazing and harvestingduring revegetation.


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Spectacular benets have been documented in well-known watershed projectsin India. In Sukhomajri in Haryana state, the entire village ecosystem and econ-

omy were transormed through protection o common lands and irrigation. Thecommon areas became a lush, valuable orest, and stall-ed bualoes and cross-bred cows almost entirely replaced goats, turning the village into a major seller omilk. These changes resulted in a sharp rise in incomes, with all households gain-ing (Kerr 2002). In Ralegaon Siddhi, Maharashtra, irrigated area rose rom 0 to 70percent through water harvesting and transormed the village economy. Nearby,under the Indo-German Watershed Development Project, irrigation raised labordemand such that within our years, laborers in one village indicated that theycould nd 9-10 months o employment compared to only 3-4 beore the project(World Resources Institute 2005).

2.1. Socioeconomic Challenges to Successul Watershed Development

Various challenges make watershed management more complicated than suggest-ed by the glossy statistics rom successul projects, which have raised unrealisticexpectations o what can be achieved widely. Many success stories, or example,are ound in hilly, bowl-shaped microwatersheds with very avorable conditionsor water harvesting. In more typical cases, benets are incremental and gradual.With a less visible connection between investments made and benets realized,organizational challenges become more apparent (Kerr 2002).

One o the biggest challenges to watershed management is that its costs andbenets are distributed unevenly, yet cooperation is required to make it work.Uneven impacts result rom spatial variation and multiple, conficting uses onatural resources. The confict between using upper watersheds or grazing andprotecting them or regeneration to support downstream irrigation is a good ex-ample. I the benets are large and quickly maturing, those who lose in the shortterm may be willing to wait or gains, and devising mechanisms to diuse costsmay be manageable. But this is more dicult in the majority o cases where ben-ets are gradual and incremental. Even in higher rainall areas o India vegetative

regeneration takes about three years too long to ask poor people to rerain romusing resources they need.Accordingly, watershed projects need to create mechanisms to encourage

natural resource utilization consistent with the common good. Ater the ailure oearly projects that ocused only on technology, beginning about 1990 they morecommonly incorporated eorts to promote watershed governance to share netbenets. This is a simpler task in village-level microwatersheds with discernablehydrological linkages and established social relationships than in macrowater-sheds spanning multiple villages.


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94 John Kerr

2.2. Technical Challenges to Successul Watershed Development

In India, recent hydrological research suggests that watershed projects may beexacerbating precisely the water shortages they aim to overcome. At the macro-watershed level (covering many villages), Batchelor et al. (2003) document caseswhere water harvesting in upper watersheds reduced water availability down-stream. Calder et al. (2006) reers to this as catchment closure, whereby waterharvesting upstream concentrates groundwater locally and then intensive pump-ing exhausts the shallow aquier. In this case watershed development preventsboth surace runo and groundwater rom moving naturally downstream. It sug-gests two perverse project outcomes: rst, what is good or one microwatershedcan be bad or others downstream, and second, what is good or a watershed in the

short term can be bad in the long term.6

Recent literature presents additional cases detailing inaccurate understandingo technical relationships in watersheds. One example is aulty assumptions re-garding the role o trees in watershed hydrology. All over India and elsewhere,trees are planted in watershed projects with the stated objective o promotinggroundwater recharge. A motto o the Tamil Nadu Forest Department is SaveTrees to Save Water. However, most trees have precisely the opposite unctionbecause they are net consumers o water (Calder 2002). Similarly, soil scien-tists long estimated landscape-wide erosion rates by extrapolating upward romexperimental erosion plots, as i all land in a watershed eroded at the same rate

and all eroding soil disappeared entirely rom the watershed. More recent evi-dence shows that due to lters in the landscape, most eroding soil simply movesrom one part o a watershed to another (e.g. Swallow et al. 2001). Some arm-ers actually benet rom soil erosion through silt deposition on their land andeven actively encourage erosion to move soil to where it can be most productive(Chambers 1990).

Uncertainty and misunderstanding about technical watershed relationships,combined with the uneven distribution o benets and costs o management, cre-ate severe challenges to managing watersheds. This raises questions about what

really can be expected o watershed development as a strategy or transormingrural natural resources and livelihoods. Rhoades (1999) raised this question re-garding participatory watershed approaches and discussed many o the challengeslisted here. He suggested the need or more empirical analysis o whether par-ticipatory approaches can really be replicated widely, and he argued that projectworkers need better science, better methods, and better organizational skills alongwith donor money and patience. As discussed below, to date there have been moreevaluations but most participatory approaches still operate in small microwater-

6 The absence o measures to manage groundwater demand contributes to this problem in India.

Electricity to run pumps is ree in some states and subject to a low, fat ee in others, allowing pumpowners to draw unlimited water without aecting their costs. In addition, whoever pumps water rstowns it (Singh 1992) and this encourages overpumping.


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sheds. Most evaluations still cover the small success stories and it remains unclearwhether watershed management can succeed beyond a ew small exceptions.

3. Common property theory and watershed management

Can watershed management achieve the triple objectives o improved naturalresource conservation, higher agricultural productivity, and poverty alleviation?We know this is so in some cases, but can it succeed widely? Under what condi-tions can it overcome the problem o uneven distribution o costs and benets inthe ace o poorly understood, oten invisible hydrological linkages? Theoriesabout determinants o successul commons management may provide insightsinto this question.

3.1. Enabling conditions or successul management o the commons

There is a long line o literature on conditions that encourage successul commonsmanagement. Wade (1988) and Ostrom (1990) oered sets o avorable condi-tions, and Baland and Platteau (1996) updated them. Agrawal (2001) synthesizedand revised these actors, ocusing on those that enable sustainable governance othe commons. For watershed projects, the key issue is a groups ability to estab-lish a new governance system to eectively manage the watershed commons.

Table 1 presents a list o actors associated with emergence o sel-governance

o the commons. It draws on Agrawals (2001) synthesis but includes only thoseactors likely to be important or establishing a new, successul management sys-tem. Additional actors draw rom Ostrom (1999), who distinguished betweendesign principles o long-lived management systems and actors conducive toemergence o new systems. Many actors in Agrawals synthesis draw rom Wade(1988), and Baland and Platteau (1996).

Watershed characteristics correspond poorly to the list o enabling condi-tions in table 1. This provides many clues about why watersheds are dicult tomanage and why projects might work better in a village-based microwatershedthan a much larger area. Beginning with resource characteristics, eight avorable

attributes are listed: small size, well-dened boundaries, low mobility, possiblestorage o benets, predictability, easibility o improving the resource, traceabil-ity o benets to a management intervention, and availability o indicators o theresource condition. Almost all o these attributes present problems because theyrarely characterize watershed management. For example, invisible boundaries,mobility o groundwater and surace water, unpredictability and ineasibility oimprovement, and lack o traceability all pose challenges to collective action inmany watershed cases. Even where some o these conditions are more avorable,mobility o water leads to an uneven distribution o benets and costs, which

raises major challenges. It is important to note that problems o mobility, clar-ity o boundaries, and traceability apply regardless o the scale but are mitigatedsomewhat in smaller watersheds.


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96 John Kerr

Group characteristics include small size, clearly dened boundaries, sharednorms, trust, past successul experiences, appropriate leadership, interdependence

among group members, heterogeneity o endowments but homogeneity o inter-ests, and low levels o poverty. All o these attributes except poverty point to theadvantages o working in a watershed no larger than a village, because most othese characteristics will not be ound among multi-village groups. Homogene-ity o interests will be dicult to achieve in most watersheds due to confictinguses o shared water resources and upstream-downstream dierences in interests.Likewise, some watershed uses are dependent on others but dependence is notalways mutual, thereore the condition o interdependence may not hold. Regard-ing poverty, working at a small scale makes it easible to systematically excludeareas with high poverty rates.

The next set o conditions concerns the relationship between characteristicso the resource and the users, including overlap in location between the two, highlevels o dependence by users on the resource, and suciently gradual demandgrowth and technical change to allow emerging institutional arrangements timeto establish. Upstream-downstream watershed relationships sharply underminethe rst o these conditions, although less so in smaller microwatersheds whereat least this relationship may be perceptible and the inhabitants may know eachother.

Table 1: Factors conducive to emergence o local institutions to manage the commons

1. Resource system characteristics

a. Small size (W, O)

b. Well-demarcated boundaries (W, O)

c. Low levels o mobility (A)

d. Possibilities o storage o benets rom the resource (A)

e. Predictability (O)

. Indicators o resource conditions are available at reasonable costs (O 99)

g. Traceability o resource improvement to a particular intervention

h. Feasibility o improving the resource (O 99)

2. Group Characteristics

a. Small size (W, B&P)

b. Clear boundaries (W)

c. Shared norms (B&P)

d. Trust (O 99)

e. Past successul/organizational experiences (O 99)

. Appropriate leadership (B&P)g. Interdependence among group members (W, B&P)


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h. Homogeneity o interests (even with diversity o economic and political assets) (O,B&P)

i. Low poverty (A)j. Low discount rate (O 99)

3. Relationship between resource system and group

a. Overlap between user group residential location and resource location (W, B&P)

b. High levels o dependence by group members on resource system (W)

d. Demand growth and technical change are gradual enough to give emerging institutionalarrangements time to establish (A)

4. Institutional arrangements

a. Ability to establish avorable institutional arrangements|

5. External environment

a. Autonomy (W, O 99)

b. Availability o low cost adjudication (A)

c. Low cost exclusion technology with respect to the external world (A)

e. Supportive external sanctioning institutions (B&P)

. Appropriate levels o external aid to compensate local users or conservation activities(B&P)

Adapted rom Agrawal (2001) (A), who drew upon earlier lists by Ostrom (1990) (O),Wade (1988) (W), and Baland and Platteau (1996) (B&P). Agrawal (2001) ocused onactors contributing to sustainable governance rather than emergence o sel-organiza-tion. Ostrom and Wade distinguished between these two sets o actors but Baland andPlatteau did not. This table includes those actors rom Agrawals list that are importantor sel-organization and adds others presented by Ostrom (1999).

This actor is specic to watersheds. For example, it needs to be apparent that treating theupper watershed infuences groundwater availability downstream.

Ostrom (1999) also includes low discount rate as an important group characteristic. It isexcluded here as it is likely to be a unction o other included variables such as poverty,ability to exclude outsiders, and past experiences with collective action.

| Favorable institutional arrangements that Agrawal mentioned include: a) rules are simpleand easy to understand (B&P); b) there are locally devised access and management rules(W, O, B&P); c) rules are easy to enorce (W, O, B&P); d) there are graduated sanctions(W, O); e) low cost adjudication is available (O), ) monitors and other ocials are ac-countable to users (O, B&P), and g) restrictions on harvests match the regenerative ca-pacity o resources (W, O). Another related actor that Agrawal cited was airness in theallocation o benets rom the common resource (B&P). Agrawal cites these as enablingconditions or sustainable governance o the commons. Ability to establish such rulesrather than their actual existence is the appropriate indicator or a group that is trying todevelop a collective management system.


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98 John Kerr

Table 1 also mentions the ability to establish avorable institutional arrange-ments. Agrawals arrangements to acilitate sustainable governance included sim-

ple rules, locally devised access and management rules, ease o enorcing rules,graduated sanctions, availability o low-cost adjudication, and accountability omonitors and other ocials to users. These conditions again show the advantageso working in small rather than large watersheds, because rules cannot be simple,enorceable, locally devised or easily adjudicated i they cover multiple villagesin poor communication with one another. Accountability o monitors is a prob-lem where resources have multiple, conficting users because monitors may bemore accountable to one group o users than another. Agrawal also mentioned theneed to match restrictions on harvest to the regenerative capacity o the resource.This brings to mind the observation by Calder et al. (2006) o catchment closure,whereby trapping water resources upstream and pumping it heavily prevents itsregeneration downstream. The problem is that where the microwatershed is themanagement unit, an approach that provides local benets within the microwa-tershed may cause harm in other microwatersheds downstream. In other words,whereas addressing socioeconomic concerns avors small microwatersheds as theunit o operation, addressing this hydrological problem requires working in largemacrowatersheds and the two may be incompatible.

The nal set o enabling conditions in Table 1 concerns the external environ-ment: autonomy and low-cost exclusion technology with respect to the outside

world, supportive government, and access to low-cost adjudication. There aremany examples o all o these actors both avorable and detrimental to successulwatershed management and oten they are beyond local managers control.

3.2. Platorms or managing the commons

Platorms or analysis and negotiation have been discussed in the literature as ameans to promote collective action on the commons.7 Steins and Edwards (1999a,1999b) drew on this idea in an eort to move away rom theoretical discussionsabout peoples propensity to work collectively and toward discussions o ap-

proaches to help them do so. They produced a special journal issue to examinethe use o platorms to manage complex, multiple-use common pool resourcessuch as watersheds. They concluded that platorms have great potential to im-prove commons management, listing several actors that help them work. Table2 cites these actors as quoted rom the text o their article. They are quite com-plex and subtle, and it is easy to imagine diculty in making them work widely.The discussion o nested platorms is useul, because microwatersheds each withtheir own platorm could be nested within a larger macrowatershed platorm, suchthat each platorm helps assure that management approaches are compatible both

7 In this context, platorms are orums in which diverse stakeholders jointly analyze and negotiatediverse interests and develop action plans to solve natural resource management problems.


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within and among microwatersheds. Very ew watershed programs in India oper-ate this way, although the World Bank supported projects are intended to (World

Bank 2007).

Table 2: Factors associated with eectiveness o nested platorms in governing complex

common pool resources

1. It is important that nested platorms correspond with the resource system level that is atstake in ecological, economic, and social terms and that they are stakeholder-based,rather than user-based.

2. Back up by small-scale local platorms can acilitate decision-making and eective repre-sentation in larger-scale nested platorms or collective CPR management.

3. The empowerment o platorm participants to elicit their views is important to challenge in-

equalities (in terms o gender, ethnicity, education, and skills) and dominant power relations,and to create a situation in which communication is as open (and voluntary) as possible.

4. Stakeholders priorities, as well as the resource system, are dynamic and are constantly be-ing reshaped. Consequently, nested platorms are subject to the same dynamics.

5. In collective CPR management, social learning about the ecosystem at stake and the dier-ent stakeholders views and actions is vital to agree on action strategies and to break downexisting power structures that may hinder collective actions.

6. Platorms or resource use negotiation are always nested within other decision-makingstructures. The latter infuence the role o the nested platorm and create the context withinwhich new platorms or solving certain resource management problems are necessary orredundant.

7. A too strong reliance on the ormation o nested platorms as the solution to complex re-source management problem may overshoot the mark; sometimes it can be more eective tolet platorms evolve rom smaller-scale initiatives to tackle the perceived problem.

8. There is good reason to believe that the presence o a third party is benecial to the perorm-ance o nested platorms.

Source: Steins and Edwards (1999b). The eight actors assembled in this table are exactquotes rom the text o the original article.

Nested platorms reers to the act that decision-making processes take place at multiplelevels, including the legislative level that sets the legal ramework, the collective choicelevel whereby broad rules are made that govern interactions among dierent organiza-

tions, and the operational level where specic rules are made regarding day-to-day deci-sions (Steins and Edwards 1999a).

Stakeholders are broader than users; they include all those who aect and are aected bythe resource system.

An important acilitating actor in Table 2 is the presence o a third party acilitatorto smooth negotiation processes and protect the interests o the weak. Ravnborgand Guerrero (1999) particularly stressed this in their study o the role platormsplay in a watershed management project operated by the International Center or

Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia. It appears to urther reinorce the argu-ment that successul watershed management needs to take place on a small scaleand in a limited number o places so that such acilitation is actually easible.


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100 John Kerr

4. Evolution of Indian watershed projects

This section applies the lessons rom theory in the previous section to the experi-ence o Indian watershed projects. It begins with an overview o the evolution oIndian watershed development and a review o project evaluations. It then showshow the lessons learned rom successive generations o watershed projects areconsistent with what commons theory would predict. Briefy stated, Indian water-shed projects began in the 1970s and 1980s with a highly technocratic approachthat ailed to recognize the need to address the challenges o watershed govern-ance. Since about 1990 projects have taken a more participatory approach thatocuses more on social organization, but success remains elusive. This is not sur-prising given the insights rom theory introduced in the previous section.

4.1. Early projects

Early large-scale projects in the 1980s included the World Bank-supported PilotProject on Watershed Development and the Model Watershed Program o theIndian Council o Agricultural Research. All o these projects took a purely tech-nocratic approach as the benets o watershed development were assumed to besel-evident and uncontroversial. The World Bank-supported Pilot Project oper-ated at a vast scale o tens o thousands o hectares, with little eort to organizethe inhabitants. Project managers learned the hard way that collective action to

manage common pool resources was dicult to come by, especially when ben-ets were gradual, incremental, and unevenly distributed (World Bank 2007).

4.2. NGO programs

In the late 1980s various Indian NGOs including MYRADA in southern India,Social Centre in Maharastha, and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme inGujarat embarked on watershed development ocusing much more on social or-ganization (Hinchclie et al. 1999; Farrington and Lobo 1997). From their per-spective, watershed technology was airly straightorward and the real challenge

was to organize communities to work collectively or successul outcomes. Forexample, MYRADAs projects ocused on identiying separate interest groups(low caste people, women, landless, armers with irrigation, etc.), building theirorganizational capacity and helping them negotiate with one another to ensurethat watershed investments could satisy everyones interests (Fernandez 1994).In act, MYRADA would not even consider investing in watershed developmentuntil a village had achieved strong organizational skills. Meanwhile, Social Cen-tre would begin by identiying villages where topography was avorable or waterharvesting and where people could show evidence o collective action aroundnatural resources. Villagers also had to promise not to plant water intensive crops

like sugarcane, which would allow a small minority o well-o armers to capturebenets. Many other NGOs operated similar programs.


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All o the NGO projects worked at a very small scale to acilitate social or-ganization, with the village- or sub-village watershed as the unit o operation.

Most o them were not replicated very widely, enabling the NGO to provide closesupervision.

4.3. New generation government programs

Government programs learned the lessons rom their earlier ailures and the suc-cesses o the small NGO programs. New programs in the 1990s aimed to applythese lessons.

Integrated Watershed Development Project: The IWDP was initiated in 1990with support rom the World Bank. This new project was developed at a time

when the commons literature was blossoming and this helped in understanding theproblems o the earlier Pilot Project. The projects supporting documents showedlinks to early attempts by Wade (1988) to identiy the conditions associated withsuccessul common pool resource management. Project managers in India werealso strongly infuenced by the work o Jodha, who wrote about the reliance o therural poor on common lands and the reasons or their declining area and produc-tivity (or a summary see Jodha 1992).

The IWDP still operated in very large watersheds covering tens o thousandso hectares, but or operational purposes they were divided into smaller microwa-tersheds with more distinguishable boundaries. User committees were established

to represent dierent interest groups in the watersheds and were given certainpowers to make rules; systems o graduated sanctions were established based ontraditional institutions; monitoring systems were established; etc. The new in-stitutions were established on a weak ooting, however. Committees sometimesexisted in name only, monitoring systems were propped up by project unds, andpeople agreed to things apparently just to gain project unds (Kerr and Pender1996). O course these are typical problems acing heavily unded developmentprojects but they demonstrated why Ostroms (1990) principles cannot be used asa blueprint.8

Ministry o Rural Development: The Ministry radically redesigned its water-shed projects based on an advisory committees recommendations in 1994 (Gov-ernment o India 1994). These projects became the centerpiece o government ru-ral development eorts in semiarid, unirrigated areas. The 1994 Guidelines drewheavily on the experiences o NGOs like MYRADA, operating at village-levelmicrowatersheds as the new unit o implementation, devoting attention to par-ticipation, and endorsing indigenous practices and management systems. NGOsbecame eligible to implement these projects.

Government-NGO collaborative programs in Maharashtra: In the mid-1990s,two new programs aimed to combine the technical expertise o government agen-

8 Ostrom regularly points out that the design principles must not be treated as a blueprint but herwarning oten seems to be ignored.


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102 John Kerr

cies and social organization skills o NGOs. The Indo-German Watershed De-velopment Programme (IGWDP) ollowed the model o Social Centre described

above, and the Adarsh Gaon Yojana (AGY) ollowed the approach taken by Mr.Anna Hazare o Ralegaon Siddhi, site o the most successul watershed project inMaharashtra (Kerr et al. 2002). Hazare, one o Indias best known social activists,believed that successul village-level watershed management required practicalsteps to protect the natural resource base and a commitment to personal responsi-bility. Accordingly, to be eligible or the AGY, a village had to ban open grazingand tree-cutting in upper watershed pastures, engage in group labor (shramdan)or the benet o the village as a whole, orego alcohol consumption, and practiceamily planning. To be eligible or the IGWDP, villages had to demonstrate thecapacity or collective action and agree not to grow water intensive crops likesugarcane.

4.4. Evaluations o Indian Watershed Projects

There have been a number o evaluations o Indian watershed projects over theyears but very ew compared dierent approaches or tried to correct or selectionbias. Among the individual evaluations there appears to be an overrepresentationo well-known, highly supervised projects known to be successul. This was thecase or a special edition o the Indian Journal o Agricultural Economics (1991)and a set o sel-evaluations o participatory projects reported in Hinchclie et

al. (1999), or example. Overrepresentation o successul cases oten stems romimplementing agencies aiming to promote their work and data sets being moreavailable or heavily supervised projects with large budgets. Ratna Reddy et al.(2004) purposely selected success stories in an evaluation o the Ministry o RuralDevelopment projects in order to assess the potential or successul watersheddevelopment to improve rural livelihoods.

Joshi et al. (2005) conducted a meta analysis o 311 evaluations that estimatedbenet-cost ratios o watershed projects, based on all available studies. Presum-ably the success stories are also overrepresented in this work.

Kerr et al. (2002) randomly selected 86 villages in Maharashtra and AndhraPradesh to compare the perormance o rst-generation government watershedprojects with a technical orientation, NGO projects ocusing on social organiza-tion, and the two NGO-government collaborative projects described above. Thisstudy tried to correct or selection bias.

As mentioned, Batchelor et al. (2003) ound that successul water harvestingin upper watersheds came at the expense o lower watershed areas due to catch-ment closure ater heavy pumping in upper watersheds.

Most evaluations are avorable. The early evaluations o heavily supervisedprojects showed impressive results, as did the sel-assessments in Hinchclie et

al. (1999). Ratna Reddy et al. (2004) ound only modest impacts on livelihoods.Joshi et al. (2005) ound a mean benet cost ratio o 2.14 in their meta-analysis,


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with stronger perormance in more participatory projects than more technocraticones. Joshi et al. expressed surprise at nding projects covering more than 1250

hectares perorming stronger than those covering less than 1250 hectares. Howev-er, the 1250 hectare cuto is not very useul or assessing the impact o watershedsize on perormance. The more important distinction is whether the watershedcovers more than one village, because village-level watersheds are still part o anatural social unit. In the study by Kerr et al. (2002), 39 out o 86 villages exceed-ed 1250 hectares, so the 1250 hectare dividing line does not address this issue.

Kerr et al. (2002) ound that NGO-government collaborative projects per-ormed the best, ollowed by purely NGO projects and lastly by the rst gen-eration government projects. The projects with an NGO component had a strongsocial organization ocus that dealt specically with the uneven distribution obenets and costs, and they operated in smaller watersheds within a single vil-lage. On the other hand, government projects were solely technocratic, and theone government project that operated in multiple-village watersheds perormedthe worst. The successes by the projects with an NGO component came in theorm o reduced soil erosion, higher crop income, improved management o com-mon pastures, more employment, and increased irrigation. The authors cautionedthat the successul cases were consistently in small microwatersheds and did notoperate widely, with no evidence they could replicate substantially or operate inhigher scale watersheds.

4.5. Discussion

Indian watershed projects evolved rom the mid-1980s to the present by gradu-ally intensiying their ocus on participation and social organization while alsoreducing their size. These shits resulted mainly rom the demonstration eects oearly NGO projects but in some cases with infuence rom the literature on com-munity-based natural resource management. In many respects the changes romlarge to small and rom technocratic to participatory refect the actors believed toacilitate the emergence o local institutions to manage the commons. It is more

likely that the experience o the Indian watershed projects helps to validate thoseactors, and less likely that the literature guided the Indian projects, with perhapssome iteration between the two. The NGOs likely identied the advantages o aparticipatory approach simply through their experiences on the ground.9 Somelarger projects like those supported by the World Bank drew both on the experi-ences o successul NGOs and on the literature, which tended to reinorce eachother.

Although the watershed literature requently cites studies o the commons toexplain the need or social organization eorts, it is conspicuously silent about the

9 In some cases NGOs documented their experiences. See or example the many reports byMYRADA (www.myrada.org) and Seva Mandir (www.sevamandir.org).


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104 John Kerr

mismatch between characteristics o watersheds and the actors believed to con-tribute to successul commons management. An exception is Ravnborg (2000),

who commented that had she paid attention to Ostroms design principles, shenever would have undertaken the CIAT watershed project in Colombia. Thiswould have resulted in one less successul watershed project. On the other hand,because it operated on a tiny scale with intensive external assistance that cannotbe replicated widely, that success may be an exception that proves the rule.10

Successul watershed projects have beaten the odds by overcoming inherentconstraints to collective action, but they have not surmounted two remaining ob-stacles. First, projects with high investment in social organization may not bereplicable beyond a small number o cases. Second, operating on the basis oa workable social unit (a village microwatershed rather than a macrowatershedthat crosses administrative boundaries) apparently trades one set o problems oranother.

Regarding the rst problem o constraints to replication, there is little evidencethat very successul projects have replicated beyond a ew villages. Even thosethat have successully expanded their operations reveal major limitations. Forexample, the IGWDP undertook a systematic approach to replication and ater 12years its successul village level projects number in the hundreds, but it works inan area with tens o thousands o villages. The IGWDPs deliberate approach hasyielded strong perormance, in sharp contrast to government projects with much

wider coverage (Kerr et al. 2002).Although wide replication, or scaling up, appears to be the Holy Grail or

projects designed to elicit social change, there are many reasons why it is not arealistic goal. Manski (1995), or example, points out that the conditions o a pilotproject will not likely be replicated exactly in other sites, because conditions willdier. Similarly, a pilot project is likely to be carried out dierently than the scaledup version, even with identical design, because a larger eort may aect marketwages or strain the supply o competent program administrators. Project outputsalso may change when a project expands, or example i a market saturates. Forwatersheds, catchment closure becomes a more serious problem as watershed de-velopment expands because it induces greater pumping o groundwater.

The big question concerning the tradeo between operating at an optimal hy-drological unit versus an optimal social unit is its severity. In the early days owatershed projects, ignoring the optimal social unit resulted in ailure becauseprojects could not achieve eective watershed governance. More recently, the

10 The CIAT watershed covered about 7000 hectares with about 1100 inhabitants scattered in 23villages. Based on previous experience and literature on collective action, the CIAT team chose towork with small groups o 30-40 amilies covering about 200 ha subwatersheds to address naturalresource management problems. Through a long process, the subwatershed groups gradually

developed platorms or diverse stakeholders to jointly analyze and negotiate diverse interests anddevelop action plans to manage natural resources. CIAT acted as acilitator (Ravnborg and Guerrero1999).


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pendulum has swung in the opposite direction and most projects operate at the vil-lage level, disregarding hydrological linkages between microwatersheds. Catch-

ment closure has emerged in part by ignoring these linkages, and it shows theneed to address them by working at a macrowatershed scale. However, such anapproach is incompatible with the strategy made successul by the IGWDP o in-vesting exclusively in separate microwatersheds where water harvesting potentialis high and communities have demonstrated the ability to work collectively.

5. Implications for policy and practice

The best watershed management approach certainly depends upon the situationand objectives. Some possibilities are: 1) stay small and give up on complex,

higher scale watershed management; and 2) build capacity or higher scale water-shed management through improved institutional arrangements and improvedtechnologies.

5.1. Give up scaling attempts and accept a smaller impact

Theory and experience have shown that collective action is more likely in small,village-level watersheds, and that project agencies can best acilitate watershedmanagement i they work in a small number o locations. The IGWDP ollowsthese principles, working only where it perceives a high probability o success. It

is important to recognize that this approach does not discriminate against villagesdeemed poor candidates. First, being bypassed by a project that would not workis no great loss, and second, rural areas o developing countries have many otherneeds besides watershed development. For example, survey respondents in Indiaexpressed strong preerence or investments in medical acilities, roads, latrines,and other inrastructure as opposed to watershed development (Kerr et al. 2002).In an era o decentralization, people should be able to choose between watershedand other investments like inrastructure and government services.

A United States Forest Service watershed program aiming to reduce nonpointsource water pollution learned similar lessons about the need to prioritize its work,

as success in individual project sites correlated closely to local civic capacity. Anevaluation by Doppelt et al. (2002) recommended ocusing the watershed projectsin areas with high civic capacity while investing in such capacity elsewhere.11 ForMYRADA, whose programs were described in section 4.2, not only was build-ing local organizational capacity critical or watershed management, but an ini-tial capacity building investment led to numerous other economic opportunities(Fernandez 1994).

11 Doppelt et al. (2002) dene civic capacity in terms o social capital, community competence , andcivic enterprise. They do not suggest a means o easily identiying civic capacity beore starting a

project apart rom assessing it through interactions with pertinent groups such as local governmentand nonprot organizations. The Indo-German Watershed Development Programme and the AdarshGaon Yojana in Maharashtra, India, discussed above, also selected their project villages on the basiso civic capacity, dened in terms o demonstrating the ability to sel-impose and abide by certainrules o collective restraint prior to investing in a new project (Kerr et al. 2002).


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106 John Kerr

In India, the recommendation o staying small is utile because the Indiangovernment aims to expand watershed development as widely as possible. Other

recommendations are needed.

5.2. Build capacity to operate at macrowatershed scales

Research has shown that the microwatershed approach may be creating hydro-logical problems that would be best addressed by operating at a macrowatershedscale. This would require working simultaneously to promote watershed govern-ance capacity both within and between microwatersheds.

Within microwatersheds, this calls or continuing to build organizational, ad-ministrative, and governance skills at local levels as mentioned above. For exam-

ple, very little o MYRADAs approach to watershed management seems to beabout watersheds, refecting its conviction that strong organizational capacity isthe most critical ingredient (Fernandez 1994). Such capacity is needed to bringtogether stakeholders with conficting interests, design workable compromises,and put them to work. Better governance may help in enorcing whatever agree-ments can be developed.

At the macrowatershed scale, new institutional arrangements are needed topromote interaction among microwatershed groups within large macrowater-sheds, as described in section 4.5 above. This would involve developing some-thing like a nested platorms approach at a macrowatershed scale. It could in-

volve specic mechanisms to acilitate the interaction such as new legislationor new arrangements or sharing upstream-downstream costs and benets. TheCGIARs SCALES project aims to build cross-scale institutional mechanisms orwatershed management, addressing village- and basin-level interaction (Swallowet al. 2005).

Macrowatershed management could also benet rom improved technologyto understand and track upstream-downstream relationships. Technologies thatcould track hydrological relationships and trace impacts o natural resource usein one location on another would open new possibilities or developing indicators

and monitoring systems to acilitate management. I such technologies seem likea antasy, consider that remote sensing and GIS have revolutionized research onland use and land cover change, laying the groundwork or various complex insti-tutional arrangements such as global markets or carbon sequestration.

On a less uturistic level, Calder et al. (2006) shows how EXCLAIM, an ex-isting simulation model with a visual interace, can model hydrological relation-ships to visually demonstrate upstream-downstream relationships and the spatialeects o management changes.

5.3. A fnal word

Commons research emerged in the 1980s in response to the incorrect presump-tion that the tragedy o the commons was inevitable. Commons researchers do


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not imagine that all commons can be well-managed, yet watershed projects areorganized as i this were so, with most watershed agencies aiming to spread their

projects as widely as possible despite unavorable conditions or collective action.It is as useul or commons research to point out the limits o common propertyresource management as to highlight its potential.

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