Abstract:
Currently, climate change and its impacts is a key issue in worldwide. Adaptation to climate change is
making a system suitable to moderate the impact of climate change or deal with the consequence or to take
advantage of new opportunities. Integrated watershed management (IWM) gives an opportunity for
understanding and reconciling the interconnections among various land use systems. There are various
opportunities under integrated watershed management such as getting different benefits, conserving nature
and reducing negative impacts together. However, there are challenges arises during implementing the
integrated watershed management in different watersheds. The challenges should be clearly identified and
forwarding solution should be given for policy and decision makers in order to improve the successes and
benefits of watershed management. This study was conducted to assess the role of IWM and its challenges
and opportunities of implementation in Haro werke watershed. The sample micro watersheds were
purposively selected considering its accessibility and vulnerability to resource degradation. Simple random
system was used for interview. Data were collected from all relevant sources through field observation, key
informants, interview, focused group discussion, household survey and review of documents. The evidence in
the watershed shows that biophysical, socio economic and political factors govern the implementation of
integrated watershed management. Large proportion of the watershed area (56.5%) of very steep and
steeply slope and degraded land, lack of understanding of IWM awareness and education (53.2%), due to
land tenure and topography (45.3%), no habit for maintenance and planning together, and weak institution
commitment to transfer watershed principles into practices were the major problems of the watershed. In
spite of having those limiting factors, the effort of the government through making policy framework on
watershed resource management is a prospect for the area, besides harmonious cultural interaction of the
community to live together with nature and themselves. Therefore, policy and strategies should be applied at
a watershed level; compressive technical capacity building training should be given to the local experts and
information center should be created for sharing data between concerned institutions and stakeholders
about the technologies in integrated watershed management practices. The current watershed management
approaches mostly focus on physical part of the implementation /soil and water conservation rather than
integrating the biological part, but effective watershed management requires multidisciplinary and
innovative approaches based on the local situation. Frequent removal of sediments and other maintenance
as well as livestock controlling is required.
