FAO E-workshop
"Land-Water Linkages in Rural Watersheds"

Workshop Programme

The workshop addressed the issue of Land-Water Linkages from two perspectives, Landscape Perspective and Lifescape Perspective in order to facilitate the discussion, while recognising that due to the complex human, biological and physical interactions in any ecosystem, there are certainly overlaps and grey areas between the two viewpoints.

Part I: Land-Water Linkages: The Landscape Perspective

Land use practices are assumed to have important positive and negative impacts on both the availability and quality of water resources in small to medium sized rural watersheds. The discussion focused on the nature and scope of the - perceived and measured - biophysical impacts of land use practices, including agricultural, forestry, grazing, and preservation activities, on the hydrological regime and water quality, and the importance of these impacts in different scales and contexts.

1. How can we classify land-water linkages in terms of land use impacts on water resources?

2. What are the impacts of land use on the water resources and how do they vary in relation to agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions?

3. What are the impacts of land use on living aquatic resources and ecosystems?

4. What is the relative importance of anthropogenic and natural causes in degradation of water resources?

5. How does the relative importance of the impact change with the size of the watershed?

6. Is our scientific knowledge and understanding adequate in relation to the environmental processes involved in land-water linkages?

7. Which tools and methods exist to assess the relation between land-use and water resources?

8. Which parameters and indicators can be used to measure land-use impacts on water resources?

9. What are technical and financial constraints in assessing land-water linkages?

10. What is the relation between perceived and real impacts?

11. How can we best deal with variability and uncertainty in assessing land-water linkages?

12. What is the importance of time in the assessment and perception of land use impacts?

Part II: Land-Water Linkages – The Lifescape Perspective

The benefits of improved land management, or the negative consequences of land use practices on water resources, might not only be felt by resource users who cause them, but also by others who live downstream or make use of the affected groundwater resources. The discussion focused on benefits and costs resulting from impacts of land-use to downstream resource users, and instruments and mechanisms to distribute these benefits and costs by upstream and downstream land and water users. Criteria for a successful implementation of such instruments will be discussed.

13. Which direct water uses (eg. domestic use, irrigation) are affected by impacts of land use on water resources, and how?

14. Which indirect uses of water (eg. fisheries, flood control, self-cleaning capacity) are affected by land-use impacts on water resources, and how?

15. How can we value these effects in terms of benefits or costs for downstream users?

16. What is the importance of time and spatial scale in valuing land-use impacts on water resources?

17. What types of mechanisms can be used to link upstream and downstream users in different socio-economic contexts and at different watershed scales?

18. What are examples of such mechanisms which have yielded promising results?

19. What are the main constraints to implementation of these mechanisms?

20. Can we identify criteria of success for the implementation of such mechanisms?

Part III: Land-Water Linkages: The Way Forward

Discussion focused on conclusions and recommendations that can be drawn from the debate at the workshop forum.

21. Can we prioritise land-use impacts on water resources that should be the focus of further work on the issue?

22. Can we identify regions, climate zones, and socio-economic conditions, in which land-water linkages play an especially important role and need to be addressed as a matter of priority?

23. Can we identify successful or promising mechanisms and instruments to share benefits and costs resulting from land-water linkages by upstream and downstream people which should be focused on in further work on the issue?

24. Are current land and water management guidelines adequately addressing land-water linkages?

25. How can the feed back between local know-how, scientific knowledge and policy decisions with regard to land-water linkages be improved?

26. Which recommendations can we formulate with respect to
   - hydrologists?
   - economists?
   - policy makers?
   - development agencies?
   - local resource managers?