Sustainable and Effective Water Management:

a holistic approach to improve socio-economic status of rural community

Abstract

Sustainable development aims at maintaining an equilibrium between human needs and economic development within the parameters of environmental conservation through efficient use of natural resources to ensure trade-off between desired production consumption levels within assimilate capacity of natural ecosystem. FAO defined sustainable agricultural and rural development to mean the management and conservation of the natural resource base and the orientation of the technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generation. Such sustainable development (land and water resources) conserve land technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable. Soil, water and vegetation are the most important natural resources for survival of the mankind. They provide food, firewood, fibre and other materials to satisfy the need of the people. As the pressure of human and bovine population is becoming threat to land and water resources for the nation, there will be greater need to proper management of natural resources on the sustained basis. However, we should not forget that even today we are largely depending upon rainfed agriculture for our cereals, pulses and oilseeds. If reasonable budget allocations are made for upliftment of farmers of rainfed agriculture on watershed basis, they will not only survive but the entire mankind also survives.· In the recent years pressure on the land resources on our planet has increased tremendously. By the year 2010, the world's population will grow to almost 7 billion. At present it is growing at a rate of 90 million annually. Thus the amount of land available for food supply and other human needs will continue to decline in per capital terms. In India, the agriculture is mainly rainfed, many regions are dry and drought prone, deforestation is going on at faster rate, the ground water is depleting quickly, problem of soil erosion and land degradation is very severe. The percent wise degraded land and vital statistics for land degradation due to water erosion are given in table 1 and 2,respectively