Environment and Community Resilience: How Maharashtra is investing in women’s leadership for sustainable development in water stressed areas

“The definition of Sustainable Development is meeting the need of present generation without compromising the need of future generation”- Brundtland Commission, 1972, Stockholm Conference on Sustainable Development.

Increasing Vulnerabilities in Marathwada Region of Maharashtra: A Nexus of Water, Sanitation, Agriculture and Environment

Drought is one of the most frequently occurring natural disasters in India. With its increased frequency and expanded coverage in the recent years, about one third of the country is either drought prone or under desert areas (CGWB, 2018). These areas are lagging behind in agriculture and also in overall economic growth. They experience wide year-to-year fluctuations in agricultural production and incomes and have a relatively high incidence of poverty.

Maharashtra has declared drought in three of the past five years. Almost 70 per cent of the state’s geographical area lies in semi-arid region, rendering it vulnerable to water scarcity. This is further exacerbated by increasingly frequent incidences of drought and floods (India Spend, Oct 2019). These impacted areas therefore experience wide year-to-year fluctuations in agricultural production and incomes and have a relatively high incidence of poverty, leading to them being left behind and experience poor agricultural growth.

UNICEF Maharashtra with the support of the Disaster Management, Relief and Rehabilitation Department, GoM in 2015-16 carried out a rapid assessment to measure the impact of current drought and drought-like situations and the related consequences for communities, particularly children and women, in terms of access to basic services and coping mechanisms in the state’s Marathwada region. After assessing 1,883 families and 200 farmers in the region, it was found that almost half of the villages had only one source of water for drinking and other domestic purposes, 27 per cent of the farmers did not have any water management technique, and that during lean periods of the year, 84 per cent of the families faced irrigation challenges. Women were found to be disproportionately affected by the impacts of water scarcity and the lack of community-level management of water sources poses additional threats to efforts required to curb exploitation and maladministration.  Scarcity has tripled the burden of women and girls in terms of household tasks and they travel further to fetch water, fuel, fodder and find casual work. This in turn has great potential to worsen their sanitation, hygiene and nutritional outcomes – all which come with alarming multi-generational implications. 

Therefore, UNICEF, Swayam Shikshan Prayog, and RedR worked with the Government of Maharashtra to implement a pilot that sought to build resilience within the affected communities against these very issues.

‘Women-led Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Resilient Practices Project’, or w-SHARP,  was implemented on the basis of the assessment to test the  effectiveness of risk informed planning driven by local contexts and communities such as those in Marathwada, especially during the period of each year during which water availability is at an all-time low, i.e. March to June.  

The pilot south to enhance water, livelihood and foot security across 100 villages encompassing 10,000 families in two drought-prone blocks of Maharashtra. In order to build climate resilient practices within the most vulnerable groups, w-SHARP targeted women’s participation and that of vulnerable families as a core aspect of the project. The project took an innovative approach by positioning women as key change agents who took on the responsibility of mobilizing their communities, local bodies and government institutions behind shared causes.

Guided by best practice and recommendations, the wSharp Programme provides an enabling environment for marginalized women to learn coping strategies to the multitude of increasing uncertainties. A key component of wSharp programme is providing a space for peer learning exchanges, and dialogue fora. The effectiveness of these programmes extends to increased awareness and implementation of water conservation practices and sustainable management

Implementing Model: Positioning Women as Agents of Change

Fifty villages from each of the two blocks were selected based on their existing vulnerabilities and involvement of women in their local governance. To ensure inclusivity in the process, the primary criteria for selection was that the 100 most vulnerable households from each target village were involved. This included marginal farmers, women headed households and landless labourers. Attention was also given to families that had adolescent girls as well as children below five years of age, to promote the passing of livelihood and nutritional benefits from heads of households to their children. Overall, 10,000 households were included in the project.

The project integrated the question of sustainability and gender empowerment in all its various approaches.  Women community leaders labelled ‘Arogya Sakhis’ (health friends) were selected and trained by UNICEF and SSP to promote  hygiene , water security and climate resilient agricultural practices. This task force of community leaders was established in each village and was responsible for actively engaging with residents to raise awareness and knowledge of pertinent issues. Through the cascade training model, through which the 100 Sakhis reached out to other motivated women and over five hundred women leaders effectively participated in collaborating with school and anganwadi workers as well as village-level leaders to promote water governance and nutrition-sensitive farming.  In addition, one of the key outcomes of this project was to encourage community participation in local governance and fostering partnership with relevant government and civil society institutions. This ensure the community is equipped with the right amount of knowledge and awareness.

Strategies for building climate resilience: Key Intervention Areas

Household-Level Engagement: The Arogya Sakhis mobilized women’s groups in their villages to discuss  information and practices relevant to good water management at the household level.  Women learned about and practiced reusing waste water, water budgeting, adopting groundwater management via soak pits, and other water-saving techniques.  Overall:

§  water budgeting  (accounting of water for household, domestic and productive need based on rainfall, runoff and evapotranspiration loss) was practiced in by all targeted households
§All pubic water sources were included in the sanitation surveillance plans  
§  1,392 soak pits were constructed in total across all targeted villages
§  28 group handwashing stations set up in various schools across the two blocks

Community-level Engagement: There was a strong focus on promotion of climate resilient agricultural practice. This includes adaptive sustainable practices; conscious shift to bio fertilizers; improved soil health, biodiversity conservation and water efficient technologies.

§  Community leaders and 2000 women farmers have been trained and 1735 women farmers are practicing mixed crop farming
§  124 Vermi-compost beds installed
§  2650 families cultivating less water-intensive fodder and practice water allocation for livestock
§  1470 families cultivated kitchen garden for self – consumption to increase nutritional intake in diet

Convergence at Multiple Levels of Governance: A unique aspect of this project was the use of national flagship programmes to enable the community to reach its goals. Construction of soak pits, toilets and adoption of new agricultural innovations were done through convergence from these funds. INR 6,35,00,000 were converged under the National Flagship Programmes such as Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), Mahamta Ganndi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and via ATMA (Agricultural Technology and Management Agency) linkages

100 Resilient Villages = One Step closer to Resilience

At the moment 100 villages have been introduced to these risk informed practices, techniques, and skills which equip them to handle their present situation much better. All of these interventions have been introduced through woman as the change makers – women who are at the forefront of facing climate variability in their daily lives. They helped in addressing these critical issues and provided solutions and challenges which allow one to redesign and reinvent what sustainable practices mean and how long do they last.  The progress of these villages will continue to be supervised to assess longer term outcomes and impact, and garner what lessons can be taken to scale across the rest of the region.

The goal of this project clearly states the aim is to establish “AF gender responsive and resilient community with food and water security in drought prone areas”. It can be said with confidence that the biggest asset of this project was the emergence of women leaders and their impact on their respective communities. 

With the w-SHARP project, it has been proven that a small step has been taken towards this goal, and these steps taken together lead to a healthier, stronger and more resilient community.

The scale-up of the WSharp programme was designed with full alignment to the Government of India’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission as well as Jal Shakti Abhiyan programme. Specific plans and investments were made to ensure that national systems were strengthened, and communities were engaged to foster long term sustainability. Plans have been in place from the beginning to ensure awareness and improved conservation practices reflected and advanced these programmes among community practitioner, partners and other concerned stakeholders.  UNICEF and SSP advocate for peer learning and exchanges through a participatory approach that accelerates localized outcomes derived from community to local government dialogue. As such, community trainings have been critical in transferring knowledge through appropriate community platforms such at the cluster and block levels. Various trainings have been organized for community leaders to ensure community uniformity and last mile connectivity is achieved. Through community tracking and monitoring systems of community behavior changes through a 7-star tool, and increased convergence with serviced providers such as ASHAs and Anganwadi. The future of this program is more focusing on integrating the Water, Energy, Land, Food, Nexus into respective government schemes like Jal Jeevan Mission and Integrated Watershed Management to localize the SDG6 and sustain the gain of access sanitation by completing the ecological loop.

Joint Authorship with SSP and Red R India