Peranan hutan dalam konservasi sumber daya air

Water resources conservation is increasingly in demand in order to help sustainable agricultural and industrial development, to sustain incomes and wealth in rural areas, to alleviate poverty among rural people, and to contribute to the sustainability of natural resources and the environment. Forestry law (No. 41/1999) is mandating to increase carrying capacity of watershed in order to improve the welfare of society. It means watershed management approach should be applied and conservation measures should be carried out, as amatter of fact that land, water, minerals and biomass resources are currently under tremendous pressure in the context of highly competing and often conflicting demands of an ever expanding population. Watershed approach has been the single most important landmark in the direction of conserving water resource and bringing in visible benefits in rural areas and attracting people’s participation in development programmes. The programmes under watershed approach broadly fall into community empowerment, soil and water conservation and improvement in the vegetative cover, through such as community based forest management, degraded forest and land rehabilitation, national movement on Forest and Land Rehabilitation, programme on One Man One Tree, and One Billion Trees for the World. Integrated watershed management concept has been launched and formulated in several priority watersheds, which is an iterative process of integrated decision making regarding uses and modification of lands and waters including water resources within a watershed. Development of the watershed needs better understanding about the various natural resources their relations with each other and their relations with livelihood of the stakeholders. Conservation will be successfully implemented when local people participate in the planning process and a cost sharing scheme applied.