ABSTRACT
Nature has bestowed us with enormous gifts, namely, natural resources which comprises the land, water, and vegetation. India constitutes only 2.4% of the world’s land area and the available groundwater resource for irrigation is about 361 km3 (https://www.nih.ernet.in" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">www.nih.ernet.in). Moreover, with 16 major forest types and 251 subtypes, the total forest and tree cover of the country constitutes (79.42 million ha) 24.16% of the country’s geographical area (FSI, 2015). These resources have been exhausted by 16.7% of the world’s human population (Sarvade, 2014a) and 18% livestock population (Sarvade et al., 2017). The availability of resources for future generation depends on their sustainable management. In the last four decades, the sustainability of natural resources had been threatened due to the misuse and mismanagement of natural resources for human greed. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to ensure their conservation in the face of changing climate, increased biotic pressure, and declining resource productivity (Bipin et al., 2000; Dalvi et al., 2010; Lenka et al., 2015). The responsibility of care, conservation, and maintenance of basic natural resources such as soil, water, and vegetation lie within mankind. Moreover, the conservation of natural resources is now usually embraced in the broader conception of conserving the earth itself by protecting its capacity for self-renewal. Watershed development aims to balance the conservation, regeneration, and use of land and water resources within a watershed developed by humans. The overall attributes of the watershed development approach, by and large, are threefold, viz, promoting economic development of the rural area, employment generation, and restoring ecological balance.
