Evaluating watershed development impacts on physical capital using household surveys and Bayesian networks

Abstract

The wellbeing of households in rural India is heavily dependent on the condition and accessibility of land and water resources. In the drier regions of India, in particular, the scarcity and deterioration of these resources has placed added pressure on vulnerable households, limiting their capacity to attain sustainable livelihoods. Livelihood assessments typically describe assets in terms of their contribution to financial, human, natural, physical and/or social capital. Physical capital assets, such as wells and livestock, not only directly provide these households with access to water and food but also create flows that increase stocks of other types of capital (e.g. financial capital). Watershed development (WSD) programs are one avenue the government of India uses to improve both livelihood opportunities for rural communities and the management of water resources and agricultural and forest lands. Traditionally, WSD has been designed and implemented at the micro-scale (<1500 ha). However, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of the WSD programs implemented at this scale as well as negative externalities on hydrologically connected villages outside of the implementation area. Reflecting these concerns, the Indian government now promotes WSD design and implementation at larger scales. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) is funding a project to investigate socio-economic and environmental impacts of WSD programs at the meso-scale (1500-10000 ha). An integrated modelling approach is being used to assess the beneficial and negative impacts of WSD interventions on household livelihoods and the natural resource base. Bayesian networks (BNs) are being used to develop models of drought resilience of alternative livelihood strategies across household classes and to analyse the influence of WSD on these households. Two types of household surveys were conducted as part of the meso-scale project. One type focused on quantifying household attributes prior to and since WSD implementation. The other focused on establishing a link between a measure of household resilience and a smaller set of key household attributes. This paper shows how these surveys can be used to assess WSD effects on physical capital within a BN framework (Figure 1). The resilience survey is used to give evidence that agricultural tools are the least resilient physical capital. The full survey is used to show that WSD seems to support well ownership. This result is then connected with resilience survey results to demonstrate that this leads to increased resilience of households.