Introduction

Soil and water are the major components of the Earth. Without their presence, no life of living creature can be expected. Changing the forms and structures on those substances are natural process but unexpected and untimely deterioration or changes on those elements causes human life more vulnerable. Nepal is one of the under developing country of the world and has just taken some political changes which has brought and will bring lots of development activities. Works that are under progress found unplanned and implemented without adequate knowledge and techniques considering ecofriendly manner. Soil and water conservation task become more challenging in the present context.

After implementation of federal system in Nepal, in Koshi Province, there are only two provincial Soil conservation and Watershed Management Offices (SWMO) of which Okhaldhunga is one of them. SWMO, Okhaldhuna is working unit designed to perform soil and watershed management activities.

SWMO has varieties of sub heading to perform activities in relation to soil and water conservation. SWMO, Okhaldhunga performed conservation related, tourism promotional and ecofriendly several activities under those sub headings in F/Y 2076/77. Though, it is a provincial office, it performed its activities in coordination with local levels and in some places with a joint venture to solve big problems.

Working Modality

1. Information dissemination and collection
2. Participatory Community need assessment
3. Community based watershed management plan
4. Annual action plan formulation and implementation
5. Meeting with User group
6. Survey design and estimation
7. Agreement with user group and activity implementation
8. Monitoring and Evaluation

Activities implemented from SWMO, Okhaldhunga

SWMO activities focused mainly on soil and water related conservation activities of four covering districts under following sub-headings:Integrated soil erosion control

1. Road side soil conservation
2. Urban watershed management
3. Drinking water and irrigation watershed management
4. Wetland/Pond watershed management
5. Hydropower catchments watershed management
6. Environmental/Tourisms/Biodiversity watershed management
7. Climate change adaptation model village program (Climate Smart Village)
8. Integrated dry area management
9. Bio-engineering river training works
10. Emergence soil conservation program
11. Seedling production, purchasing and distribution
12. Management and observation of implemented conservation works.
13. Monitoring and Evaluation
14. Water resource management and multiuse (federal program)
15. Gully/landslide treatment, bioengineering using fruit seedling (federal program)