What is Watershed Management

The over exploitation of natural resources (soil, water, fauna and flora) is critically affecting the social, economic and environmental needs of the current generation and is feared to risk the ability of the future generation to meet its needs. Nowadays citizens in many countries are facing severe livelihood challenges ranging from seeking for external aids for existence to massive life devastation due to natural hazards such as flooding & land slide imposing death tolls. The degradation of the natural environment imposes the threatening of life not only in those less developed nations but also life all over the globe. The problem is more pronounced in less developed countries like the Eastern Nile Catchment nations. Sustainable development is hoped nowadays to be a promising solution. In this regard integrated watershed management is a potential tool for bringing about such a promising tool, by laying better ground for sustainable development. This chapter is prepared with the intent of showing the link between integrated watershed management and sustainable development which a country envisages to reach, and the contribution of integrated watershed management to sustainable development. Various previous documents are reviewed and used as sources of information for the preparation of the write up. The author’s professional experience on the current overall natural resources condition is an added value, too. Sustainable development, which can be achieved through proper conservation and utilization of the existing resources by employing integrated watershed management, is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,. Integrated watershed management is the process of formulation and carrying out a course of actions involving the manipulation of resources in the watershed to provide goods and services without adversely affecting the soil, water, vegetation base and other elements of the ecosystem, by employing multi-disciplinary teams.