The sustainable development has been the key objective of development strategies since the 1970s.

The concept was highlighted by World Commission on Environment and Development as a guiding principle for balancing development and environment in a manner that while development takes care of the needs of the present society, the environment is also not impaired permanently.

According to the Commission, sustainable development is development that meets the needs of present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987).

Life in the hills of Manipur is generally centered on the use of natural resources and a huge populace still remains dependent on a productive natural base for a living.

However, increasing biotic pressure, absence of appropriate technology, lack of strong policy and public participation coupled with the lack of proper understanding of environmental inter-linkages have lead to progressive decline of natural resources and destruction of watersheds.

The piecemeal efforts in planning era have largely failed to halt the march of resources degradation and the region has subsequently faced the challenge to feed increasing population. Besides, the benefits of development did not reach the real stakeholders i.e. the tribal people.

It materializes that no solution can be effective unless people accept them and put them to use.

Precisely, the earlier top-down model of natural resource management was not successful by taking local people together. Thus, the demand-responsive, community lead and participatory scheme have become the felt need of the hour to integrate the livelihood resource base in the region, which is possible only with the active involvement of local people through integrated watershed management.

It is expected that integrated watershed management approach could be an entry point for outsider to understand the local environment and for making integrated conservation and development planning at the regional level.

The integrated watershed development approach is an effective mechanism for efficient management of local resources and the key for sustainable development, poverty alleviation, livelihood security and equitable access to resources in the region.

Resource degradation

The increasing human and livestock population is continually exerting pressure on the natural base in search of land, fuel and fodder. Due to ever increasing extension of agricultural land towards the marginal and steep hill slopes, deforestation, erosion and many such ill-effects on over all local environment have been on the rise.

Faced with immediate survival needs, local people often have no alternative and are being involved in extracting more natural resources i.e. forest products. The forests have been ruthlessly over-exploited by both the legal and illegal encroachments.

Consequently, forest depletion has accentuated further soil erosion, decline in land productivity and mounting dearth of fuel, fodder and water resources.

People who sustain their livelihood on the utilization of such fragile environment and natural resources have over exploited these resources over a period of time and they have further eroded the resource base on which they must subsist.

Among the various environmental issues, accelerated rate of soil erosion, massive deforestation, productivity decline, large number of springs drying up and climatic changes have stood as the main threats to the environment.

All these go a long way towards influencing the conditions of development. Thus, human interference has caused a decrease in forest land ratio.

Many efforts have been made in order to raise the productivity of land resources after the initiation of the five year plan in the country. The output of such resources has also increased by many folds, but in practise, most of the people in mountain and hill regions still suffer from malnutrition.

Living in remote areas and working in the informal economy these people are also invisible to decision makers and other governmental agencies.

In short the available resources and their potentiality to transform the present subsistence rural economy into a modern one have not been observed prominently. Consequently, the region has remained far behind in the race of development.

What is therefore, noted fact is that backwardness of the region is not caused by lack of resources but by the problem of resource development and management. The crux of the problem lies therefore, in the use and conservation of environmental resources at the grass roots level.

Watershed Development Programmes

A quite lot of watershed development projects have been undertaken at the micro level in the state each covering a few thousands hectares of land which normally belongs to 5-6 villages.

These micro level projects have seen visible impacts in terms of increase in cropping intensity, increase in farmers' income, introduction of new crops and soil conservation.

Mentioned may be made of the Merakhong micro-watershed, Leimakhong micro-watershed, and Kha-Leimakhong micro-watershed where on an average the cropping intensity increases by over 10%.

The average increase in family's income was recorded at over 40%. Besides, the areas witnessed substantial increase in greenery. By and large the projects have met their desired objectives.

Future policy

Rapidly deteriorated natural resources clearly exhibits that there is an urgent need of an effective resource management approach that can integrate resource conservation and development interlinking people with environment at the regional level.

Using the region as a backdrop watershed management approach has been proposed as the clue of future strategy in order to promote sustainable development of natural resources in the region.

Plans based on the administrative units and Central Government decisions failed to address real needs of the region and to utilize natural regional resources. This is mainly due to top-down planning for local development and less interest of local people towards the Government launched programme.

Further selection of administrative boundary as planning unit and ignoring the ecological bases for development is the root cause for its failure. Previous studies have shown that the integrated watershed development approach is more practicable to evolve a compact technical, economical and ecological i.e. geographical unit planning for resource utilization and conservation.

Thus, in the study area, watershed management approach could play a significant role to increase the productivity of the total resources providing a logical planning unit for evaluating the biophysical linkages of upstream and downstream activities.

It was only in the sixth five year plan which was introduced as an integrated development approach. In the initial phase it had taken as the synonymous of soil and water conservation.

But the failure of large scale development programmes and the realization of the importance of interlinkages between resource productivity and sustained increase in rural income have led to a shift in watershed management approach with the prime focus of integrating environment and development at regional level.

In operational level it brings all concerned institutions into single window system through interdisciplinary approach. Recently, it is more anthropo-eco-centric and community based just than technology based, leading empowerment and self reliance of the primary stakeholders.

The watershed management approach of development is an entry point for outsiders to understand local environment, and for making development plan in comprehensive way. However, past evidences show that macro watershed management programmes in Manipur have some remarkable failures.

Many watersheds are still being degraded. Especially large-scale programmes have rarely been successful in conservation and utilization of local and natural resources. These degraded watersheds are further worsening due to over intervention of outside technical teams.

Thus social mobilization is felt to the success of watershed development approach with strong feeling of belongingness of local people towards ongoing development and conservation programmes. This is possible only by adopting micro-watershed development approach which can provide an appropriate path ways of eco-development.

Further, it would also be helpful in devising location specific solutions that may emerge by resolving activities that are conflicting and build-on complementary activities (afforestation and soil conservation in hill and mountain regions enables better productivity).

Thus, emphasis should be shift from large to small watershed area in which management of environment and socio-economic development both can be integrated. Based on the drainage pattern, transport network, population statistics and relief features, the region should be divided into macro watersheds, sub-watersheds and micro-watersheds.

They should be put forward as the unit of eco-development planning in the region. Micro watershed units can further be sub-divided into small and mini watershed unit varying in sizes for different land use purposes.

It is hoped that micro-watershed development strategy could solve the problem of five 'Es': Employment, Economy, Ecology, Export and Equity and would be ushered in eco-development with a sharp focus on resource conservation and poverty alleviation in the region.

Furthermore, the institutional and technical co-ordination amongst the involved agencies would also be strengthened in the State.

Conclusion

It can be safely concluded that the watershed of the area are continuously depleting due to several bio-physical and socio-cultural factors.

However resource base of the region has still been showing potential prospective for optimal utilization of available resources in the watershed through integrated management planning with active people's participation for a sustainable development of the hill region of Manipur.