ITC has recently won two prestigious awards for its watershed development initiatives. The Company won the Corporate Social Responsibility Crown Award for Water Practices from UNESCO and Water Digest for its distinguished work carried out in the water sector in India. ITC also received the National Award for Excellence in Water Management 2007 in the 'beyond the fence' category from the CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre for its leadership role in implementing water and watershed management practices.

In the recent past, ITC has also won the Ryutaro Hashimoto Incentive Prize given by the Asia Pacific Forum for Environment & Development, which aims at promoting information dissemination of good practices towards sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region; and the Asian CSR Award for Environmental Excellence from the Asian Institute of Management.

ITC's integrated watershed development initiative is a key intervention to reverse moisture stress in some of the more acutely affected, drought-prone districts of the country. Currently, 1671 small and large water harvesting structures built by ITC provide critical irrigation in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. This programme will soon be extended to Bihar. So far ITC's Soil and Moisture Conservation Programme has covered 30,053 hectares of rain fed agricultural land and generates employment during the lean season.

In a unique example of public-private partnership to further social causes, ITC Limited has also signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the State Government of Rajasthan for an integrated watershed development project in Bhilwara district. This programme will initially cover 5,000 hectares of arid land.

ITC's watershed development seeks to achieve two critical objectives: water conservation and soil enrichment. It constitutes water user groups and trains them to plan and build water harvesting structures like contour bunds, check dams, percolation tanks and farm ponds. Trained farmers use their knowledge of the terrain to identify locations for building water structures and develop the related micro plans. ITC contributes 75% of the cost, the balance 25% being mobilised by the user groups. The rich silt excavated from percolation tanks is used to enhance soil fertility. User groups raise regular contributions from the farmers to meet the maintenance cost of these water harvesting structures.