The Participatory Watershed Management Training in Asia (PWMTA) program GCP/RAS/161/NET recognizes the importance of local/indigenous technology knowledge and practices for watershed management in the Tropics and Himalayan region of Asia as paramount to their sustainable development process. New technologies and practices can be successful if they are well ingrained into the local/indigenous knowledge systems.
With this background, the PWMTA program commissioned action research studies in its member countries for documenting the Local/Indigenous Technology Knowledge (L/ITK) for Watershed Management (WM). This document is a result of this study in China. This is also an introduction to farmer's innovations in China. It is in reality a first effort ever made in this direction for watershed management even though many local/indigenous ideas can be found scattered in different sources. It is hoped that the countries will carry forward this work by further research as well as validation, by ingraining it into their development programs and include it in their education and training programs related to natural resources management in the upland watersheds.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Professor (Mrs.) Wu Deyi of the IRTCES, Beijing for organizing this work. The compilers have also done this work in a short time. For this I extend my highest appreciation to the study team i.e. the compilers of this document. It is a path breaking work as it brings to the forefront a glimpse of the rich local knowledge base of the people in China. They have also captured the ideas very well in sketches. I also thank Mr. Ranjan Kumar Poudyal (PWMTA) for the lay out of this document and the PWMTA team for all their support.
I hope all concerned with the development of the upland watersheds as well as those related to training, education and research in natural resources management will take note of this work and carry it forward by making use of it in the development process as well as by further documenting more local/indigenous techniques available with the Chinese people. The document is also being made available to the Asian region as many of the ideas are also applicable to other countries in similar situations.
June., 1998
Prem N. Sharma
Regional Coordinator/Chief Technical Advisor
(PWMTA) and Sr. NRM/WM Advisor (FARM)
FAO (UN), Kathmandu, Nepal
