This document deals with the proceeding of the final stakeholder workshop titled “Exploring options for sustainable water management in the Malaprabha River Basin”. The one day workshop was jointly organised by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED) and the Norwegian Institute of Water Research (NIVA) at Belgaum on 5th November 2008. The workshop objective was to disseminate the synthesis of the issues related to land and water management and bring together shared understanding of the issues, concerns and assist in developing long term strategies at the various stakeholder levels.
CISED and NIVA came together two years ago to jointly collaborate on a research project to scientifically understand and document various dimensions of the reported water shortages in the sub-basin by exploring factors such as natural resource endowments in the basin various aspects of economic efficiency in resource management and equity through cross-sectoral analysis of institutional arrangements. The project examined these aspects and existing constraints in socioeconomic, institutional and policy domains in a feasibility study to introduce quasimarket arrangements like Payment for Watershed Services (PWS) to address efficient and equitable use of scarce resources in the Malaprabha River Basin (MRB).
Given the context of the semi arid/ arid climatic nature of the study area and the socio economic threads linked to the targeted watershed service, it was considered imperative to hold a stakeholder workshop to evaluate the project findings. The workshop brought together a mix of representatives from policy formulating institutions at the regional level, non government organizations which work at institutional strengthening and existing institutions at the basin level and water/ land user groups at the consumer level.
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