Shiva H Achet and Bill Fleming has published a new article in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management which has developed a watershed management framework for mountain areas based on lessons from 25 years of experience in watershed management in Nepal. The study found that an integrated watershed management framework (IWMF) approach performed better than the conventional planning approach of DSCWM.

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Abstract: A watershed management framework for mountain areas is based on lessons learned from watershed management experience, social and institutional learning, and the use of a watershed management program evaluation in Nepal. The lessons led to the adoption of a subwatershed-based ecosystem approach based on local participation at the subwatershed level. An integrated watershed management framework (IWMF) consisting of eight steps with three checklists was developed focusing on improvement-oriented adaptive management. The eight steps lead to the preparation of a watershed management plan. In the process three checklists are used. While the first checklist has general questions pertaining to watershed analysis, the second allows participation analysis of stakeholders in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and opens up new prospects for further reinforcing or building new user group institutions based on consensus. The final checklist consists of hierarchical watershed management objectives, including goals, results and activities leading to a program planning matrix. The framework was applied to watershed planning in the Chure Region to compare the framework-based planning with conventional planning procedures. A significant difference in quality and substance of the output, with and without the use of the framework, suggests that an integrated framework is a useful tool for an ecosystem-based approach to natural resource management and socio-technical conservation.

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Shiva H. Achet, Bill Fleming, A watershed management framework for mountain areas: Lessons from 25 years of watershed conservationin Nepal, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Volume 49, Issue 5, Sep 2006, Pages 675 - 694,