Environmental policy and administrative management

NO CASH FINANCING IN THIS PROJECT Kupineysa and Budur villages, under Menji Geog, Lhuentse Dzongkhag are located at an altitude of 1000-1700 masl. These villages fall under dry sub-tropical zone. The two villages have 63 households with a total population of 600 people. The farmers of these two villages practice subsistence farming. Generally, farmers grow mainly paddy, maize and millet, besides cultivating some Barley. They also grow potatoes, mangoes, oranges, pomegranate, bananas and a few species of vegetables. Livestock farming is also an integral part of their farming. Since both the villages are connected to the Lhuentse-Mongar highway by a recently constructed farm road, farmers are able to market whatever farm products they can produce. However, due to acute shortage of irrigation water due to the failing monsoon rains and drying up of some of their water sources, both agriculture and livestock production have drastically reduced over the years. Therefore, farmers had been trying every possible ways and means to maintain their age old irrigation channels. However, land degradation, soil erosions and landslides often damaged their irrigation channels beyond repair. Ultimately, to cope with irrigation water shortage, farmers were forced to leave a lot of their highly productive lands barren and cultivate only limited areas that could be irrigated. Even to cultivate these limited areas, conflicts over water use have been arising between the communities of the two villages as well as within each village since each and every household tries to irrigate their fields in whatever ways and means they could. Farmers spent and still spend sleepless nights guarding the irrigation channel to their own fields and often diverting water from the main as well as others channels to their own which usually resulted/results to conflicts. Gradually, to sustain themselves, most of the farmers, especially men, sorted for off-farm works to make a living for their families. Farmers were able to repair and maintain properly only about 3 Km of the 7.5 Km irrigation channel with some funds from the Royal Government of Bhutan. However, the remaining 4.5 Km is badly in need of repairs, and therefore the much need irrigation water, especially during the peak paddy transplantation season, barely reaches the farmers fields. The shortage of irrigation water has also resulted in poor yield of all horticultural crops (fruits and vegetables) from which farmers used to earn good cash income in the recent past. Furthermore, environmental degradation is a major problem in both the villages. Soil erosions due to poor vegetation cover coupled by rampant livestock grazing due to shortage of feed and fodder, especially in winter, is affecting the farmers livelihoods and therefore their lives directly. Major land management and watershed protection programs need to be implemented urgently.

Bhutan