The main objective of the Participatory Rural Appraisal carried out in the Bhusunde Khola watershed between October 1995 and January 1996, was to improve the understanding of the local communities of their own situation, living conditions and environment in general, and their local resources, land use, farming systems, constraints and opportunities in particular, in order to set the stage for a participatory planning of development activities that would fit into an integrated and participatory watershed management plan (see Field Document 3/97).
The main objective of the Participatory Planning carried out together with the PRA was to prepare detailed plans for upland conservation and development activities to be implemented by the local population with the support of the project, and which would form the core of an integrated and participatory watershed management plan.
Field Document 3/97 presents the results of that PRA and planning exercise. It also describes methods and tools used and organizational aspects. The size of the communities where PRA's were conducted was small, usually between 30 and 80 households, and the duration of the PRA's was limited, especially to allow women to fully take part in the exercise. Data are presented on:
(a) Population and demography, including ethnic composition, literacy rates and local food sufficiency;(b) Farming systems and landuse, including data on landuse categories;
(c) Crops and agricultural production, cropping patterns, seasonality, trend in productivity, problems and opportunities;
(d) Livestock and animal husbandry, numbers of animals per household, trends in livestock population, fodder and feed preferences, problems and opportunities;
(e) Forests and natural resources, including a summary of soil and water resources problem areas.
The 26 PRA communities have a total population of approximately 8,850 people, the whole watershed is estimated to have a population close to 12,000. The PRA focussed on settlements on the slopes and ridges of the watershed, and did not include settlements in the valley bottom (such as Bhusunde Bazaar).
As appears from the PRA data, there is a large diversity in the watershed, this concerns not only the natural variation of mountainous areas (slope, altitude, exposition, soil, and so on), but also sociological, ethnic and religious diversity. However, it should be noted that in general the whole population of the watershed should be considered as poor.
