water resources
Apart from physical products, community forests (CF) in Nepal generate various ecosystem services that could be important not only to the stakeholders at local level, but also to the stakeholders at the regional and the global levels. Water supply from CF would be one of the many ecosystem services whose benefits are provided to the stakeholders. Considering the economic importance of water...
One of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century is to develop a means of satisfying the water demands of an ever-expanding human population while at the same time protecting the aquatic ecosystems and ecological services upon which all life depends. Achieving Sustainable Freshwater Systems brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines to present key insights and information...
Headwaters are the source of freshwater resources, the margins of drainage basins, and the first and zero order basins that surround every catchment. The challenge is to define appropriate, self-sustainable, management strategies and structures for these lands which meet the needs of the headwater habitat, including its human inhabitants, and the needs of habitats downstream.
The...
The people of Tajikistan, a small, mountainous country in Central Asia, are experiencing the impacts of climate change. More frequent droughts and heightened extreme weather conditions are hitting poor communities, eroding their resilience. The country's glaciers are melting, bringing the danger, in the future, of greater water shortages and potential disputes in the wider region. Last...
For the rapidly urbanising developing world, safe and affordable water is key to health and livelihoods, as well as meeting the Millennium Development Goals. But providing it demands innovative models. Where the context allows and the approach is appropriate, private sector involvement can generate win-win outcomes. Poor people can gain access to high-quality, affordable services, and...
Low variable rainfall, high financial risk and poor physical and social infrastructure characterise these semi-arid tropics. Some 350 million poor people in 48 developing countries live in these fragile ecosystems on a budget of one US dollar or less a day. While the number of absolute poor living in the irrigated areas of India declined by 20% (from 37 million to 30 million) between 1972 and...
The manual looks at solid waste and water management and provides guidelines and examples of how tourism operations can achieve positive results and minimise harm to a community's ecological and physical systems. Specific case studies highlight larger hotel chains, which have already implemented environmental management systems but the main focus is on SMEs in developing...
The study of baseflow in mountainous areas of basin headwaters, where the characteristics of the often fractured materials are very different to the standard issues concerning porous material applied in conventional hydrogeology, is an essential element in the characterisation and quantification of water system resources. Their analysis through recession fragments...
Mountain regions supply a large share of the world’s population with fresh water. Quantification of the hydrological significance of mountains, however, is subject to great uncertainty. Instead of focusing on global averages in advance, the present analysis follows a catchment-based approach using discharge data provided by the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC)....
Nepal is rich with inland water resources and has great potential for electricity power generation. Hydropower is one of the most sustainable national income sources to increase the nation’s GNP. Relatively few water resources are under utilization, however, although some lakes in Pokhara valley and the Kulekhani storage type hydropower reservoir are successful in supporting multipurpose...
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