A decade ago, FAO presented the results of a global review of watershed management projects carried out between 1990 and 2000. The new generation of watershed management programmes and projects, published in 2006, reflected the increasingly wide acceptance of watershed management as an integrated approach to environmental protection and development, addressing conservation of water, land and biodiversity resources and improvement of local livelihoods through enhanced and diversified production.

The publication identified new perspectives and ideas for future interventions. In the intervening years, FAO has formulated and implemented many new projects in which the new approaches to watershed management have been tested and demonstrated. This study is a comparative review of 12 such projects, carried out in as many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It represents an attempt to bring together and disseminate the lessons that can be learned from these projects, their achievements and their difficulties.

Based on the experiences of these projects, the publication provides detailed recommendations for use by practitioners working on watershed-related programmes, projects and initiatives at the national, subnational and local levels. We hope that the publication will also be of value to managers and planners involved in other integrated landscape management and natural resource planning and restoration initiatives.