Participatory research using coir geotextiles in watershed management – A case study in south India Subha Vishnudas a, * , Hubert H.G. Savenije a,b , Pieter van der Zaag a,b , Kunnathu R. Anil c , Krishnan Balan d a Water Resources Section, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands b UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands c College of Agriculture, Trivandrum, Kerala, India d Government College of Engineering, Thrissur, Kerala, India Received 2 June 2006 Available online 13 May 2007 Abstract This paper deals with participatory research on the introduction and use of coir geotextiles for soil and water conservation in a small community pond in a watershed in south India. The results demonstrate that a participatory approach enables the community to visu- alize and evaluate the impact of innovative technologies. As a result, farmers readily adapt a technology when they have experienced the positive research outcome. This reduces the adoption time, and can bring significant increase in yield, or decrease in labour costs, helping to enhance productivity, sustainability and improvement of livelihood. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Participatory research; Coir geotextiles; Watershed; India 1. Introduction The needs, constraints and practices of local people have not always been considered in watershed development pro- grammes around the world. Particularly in centrally planned projects in south Asia and eastern Africa, soil and water conservation programmes have been promoted with typical technical solutions such as terracing, contour bunding on the assumption that soil conservation measures are universally applicable and local farmers are unaware of soil erosion and ignorant of its causes and consequences (Pretty and Shah, 1999 cited in: Johnson et al., 2001). How- ever, these measures, which were often forced on people, may cause even more erosion than their own indigenous practices, either because new conservation works are not maintained or are technically inferior to existing practices (Kerr et al., 1996). In India, ninety-nine percent of watershed development projects are based on conventional approaches considering only physical aspects without attention to socio-economic or ecological conditions (Far- rington and Lobo, 1997). Recently, both the government and non-governmental organizations have realized that protection of watersheds cannot be achieved without the willing participation of local people (Pretty and Ward, 2001). Therefore for successful and sustainable watershed management, people’s participation is essential. Managing a watershed involves not only individual plots, but also common property resources like forests, springs, roads, footpaths and vegetation along streams and rivers (Swallow et al., 2001). The needs and priorities for different users are different in each watershed. By seek- ing information from farmers about their constraints and priorities, their potential for new technologies and appro- priate policies can be designed for each watershed. There- fore participatory watershed management should involve all actors to jointly discuss their interests, prioritize their needs, evaluate potential alternatives and implement, 1474-7065/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pce.2007.04.016 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 15 2784901; fax: +31 152785915. E-mail address: s.vishnudas@citg.tudelft.nl (S. Vishnudas). www.elsevier.com/locate/pce Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 33 (2008) 41–47