The Carood Watershed Management Council (CWMC) is an inter-LGU, multi-agency, multi-sectoral consortium working to ensure effective and sustainable resource management in Carood watershed while balancing the development needs of local communities.

ESSC's efforts to facilitate the process of forming a collective body that will respond to the various identified issues and concerns besetting the watershed was a scaling up of engagement of its previous work in the area on comparative assessment of 4 CBFM sites and its assistance to the local government of Candijay in the formulation of its municipal comprehensive land use plan. It was also a response to the call made by key stakeholders who concluded that the issue of flooding in two municipalities within Carood watershed cannot be resolved by a few stakeholders alone.

In the course of ESSC's work, substantial datasets on biophysical and social data on Carood watershed were processed and compiled including the development of two map poster series on Carood watershed and Bohol province which is listed below:

BOHOL PROVINCE:

• RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AREAS
• LEVELS OF DEPRIVATION
• LAND COVER AND WATERSHEDS
• FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: COMMUNITY-BASED FOREST MANAGEMENT
  

CAROOD WATERSHED:

• COMMUNITY FOREST MANAGEMENT
• RESOURCE BASE CONCERNS AND AGENDA
• ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
• DATA DEVELOPMENT FOR WATERSHED COUNCILS
• PROPOSED MUNICIPAL LAND USE PLANS
  

The efforts in Carood Watershed have had positive impact on other watershed areas in Bohol. The Abatan and Loboc watersheds have also formed their respective management councils. The provincial government is hoping to organize a province-wide network of these watershed management groups. Already, there is the Bohol Watershed Advisory Council (BOWAC), and although this was supposedly provincial in scope, but in reality the efforts are focused in the Loboc Watershed. BOWAC however is meant to be an interim group; the main objective is to organize the Bohol Network of Watershed Councils. The drive of the province to organize these management councils is largely a result of the CWMC initiative.

The proposal to and initial assessment of the International Model Forest Network to develop Carood watershed as a model forest and the ongoing negotiations to develop a forest land use plan, with the support of EcoGov, are some of the positive developments of Carood Watershed to date. 

TIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS (click here)