Agricultural water management (AWM) interventions are increasingly being promoted as a first step to enable positive development, alleviating food insecurity and poverty in the smallholder farming systems that dominate rural South Asia and sub-Sahara Africa.

These AWMs range from in-situ soil and water management improvements (conservation tillage, terraces, pitting) to supplemental and full irrigation systems, drawing water from a wide variety of sources in the landscape. However, re-allocation of water can potentially undermine other uses of the same water, for other livelihood purposes or, indirectly, by reducing availability for support of different ecosystem services.

This case study, in the Jaldhaka watershed in West Bengal, India, aimed to create a baseline of resource-based livelihoods and to assess the potential for additional development of AWM interventions in relation to the local hydrology.

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