The Community Managed Bio-industrial Watershed for Sustainable Utilisation of Natural Resources and Enhanced Livelihoods project envisages to extend the techniques of sustainable management of natural resources on a watershed scale and to be managed by the local community for food and nutrition security, environmental quality and enhanced livelihood opportunities. The project is being implemented at five different regions-

• Illupur Taluk, Pudukottai District, Tamil Nadu (semi-arid region)
• Vanur Taluk Villupuram District, Tamil Nadu (coastal tropical humid region)
• Koraput District, Odisha (Orissa) (moist sub-humid hill region)
• Hoshiarpur District, Punjab (sub-montane semi-arid alluvial region)
• Narasinghpur District, Madhya Pradesh (sub-humid region)

The last two project sites are anchored by the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana in collaboration with Shubh Karman Society and the Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Jabalpur in collaboration with the Action for Social Advancement (ASA, Bhopal) respectively.

Illupur Taluk, Pudukottai District, Tamil Nadu

Koraput District, Odisha

The strategy is to augment the local agro-eco-system, adding value to the available resources and enhance livelihoods through suitable technological interventions by selecting micro-watershed as the unit for action research and development.

The main thrust of Bio-industrial Watershed is on community rather than physical and natural resources alone. It aims to bring crop diversification, participatory technology development, enterprise promotion, creation of eco-jobs and grass-root institutions building to enable them into self sustaining institutions. Backward linkages with technology and credit, and forward linkages with markets are also emphasized through this project.