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From “Toward Ecological Recovery”
by Witoon Permpongsacharoen

Watershed, in its simplest, scientific meaning, is the drainage basin of a river, the area through which all waters flow from their highest source before draining naturally to the sea. Within the watersheds of the great Himalayan rivers, the Salween or the Mekong for example, are the watersheds of thousands of smaller rivers, streams and lakes, each with their own particular character and history.

In the broader ecological sense, the term watershed includes not only the land and water but the mountains and forest, flood plains and valleys, as well as the communities of plants, animals and people who live there ...

... [Due to demands] for development or conservation, many communities ... who have always lived with the forests and rivers are threatened with eviction. As a result of these pressures and conflict, some people are advocating a ‘watershed approach’ to managing natural resources.

[Note: New Zealand recently redefined its political administrative units to reflect watershed boundaries.] This implies a way of looking at things as a whole, of seeing people and not just the trees but the forest, not just the river but all that creates and diminishes its flow.

A watershed approach can be an alternative process of learning, of learning not by separating and isolating knowledge, but by awareness of the interaction and interdependency of people and nature, the blending (and clashing) of cultural, ecological, political and economic forces which constitute life...and destruction. In this sense, the watershed is a unit of analysis or study known as political ecology.

Far from being just an academic musing, a watershed approach is a practical way to examine and begin the search for solutions to real life problems faced by member communities of a watershed. At the heart of this approach is empathy, a respect for life downstream and in the mountain forests where water springs.

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