In the early eighties, watershed development program was a program of central government aimed at treating waste and degraded land. Then the program was characterized by top-down approach with least participation of local communities. In 1987, the objective of the program was revised and it broadened the aim of the program to an improvement of the socio-economic condition of people inhabiting the program areas. These result in integration of many stand-alone programs of central government aiming at socio-economic development of rural areas. The integration and decentralization process continued, every change was followed by evaluation studies. Based on the recommendation of the impact evaluation studies, the watershed program was revisited in 1995, 2000, 2001 gearing toward empowerment of local communities for planning and implementation of the program.

LEDeG associated with the government for implementation of programs in 1993 and started watershed development program in 12 villages of Nyoma block of Leh District. The main objective of the program was to ensure holistic development of people and natural resources in watershed belt. Apart from the training program in village and exposure visit, the following activities were carried out in all the villages.

During 1999-2005, LEDeG in collaboration with the villagers has developed 2,980 kanal of waste land and planted 2,00,200 trees in 12 villages.