In the India Himalayan Region, nearly 50 million people depend on springs for their domestic water needs, and nearly two thirds of irrigated farmland is fed by springs. However, many springs are drying due to poor springshed management, exacerbated by climate change. And tens of thousands of villages are facing water shortages.

While many experiences in the HKH demonstrate the potential of local, participatory, science-based springshed management, they also highlight challenges in scaling up these efforts. Many of these challenges stem from policy and institutional constraints.

In 2024, the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, India, initiated the development of a national scheme for sustainable springshed management to address some of these broader constraints, for which ICIMOD provided technical support. This scheme will provide a national budget and technical guidance to individual states to revive critical springs.

ICIMOD’s contributions included the development of implementation protocols that promote and facilitate the involvement of women and disadvantaged communities in all stages of springshed management (including inventory, design, and user committees), based on practical experience.