Background:

For the last 2 years YRA in partnership with Mahindra & Mahindra Limited has provided safe, and clean drinking water, livelihood improvement & sustainable agriculture practices to more than 3200 rural households in 6 villages of Hingna Block, Dist-Nagpur. There are continuous needs and demands from the neighboring villages for such a safe and easily accessible option. Hence we propose to scale up in 6 new villages of the same block as well. These villages will be within an operational radius of 25kms from the M & M‘s plant area.This project is the continuation of efforts of bringing in significant changes in the lives of the rural community by creating their access to a wide range of adaptation and mitigation strategies. The adaptation measures are climate-smart agriculture, efficient water & sanitation management, access to climate services, livelihood diversification, and mitigation measures are improving soil conditions for carbon sequestration and increasing green cover.

Geographic Location:

The proposed project area is of 12 villages (existing 6 villages & additional of 6 new villages i.e. Mandva, Kakaddhara, Pimpaldhara, Lasnapur, Borgaon, and Devali) covering 1266 households from existing & 1041 from new villages. Around 79% of households in project villages possess agricultural land and almost all of them are small and marginal farmers, growing a single crop in a year due to no irrigation facility. The duration of the project period for 1 year from May 2022 to March 2023. The proposed project will be focusing on building resilience and strengthening the food security of small and marginal farmers (including women farmers) through preparedness and better adaptation capacities to increase their adaptive capacity to climate change through climate-smart agriculture techniques across 12 villages.

Context and Rationale

The agricultural sector is the foundation of the rural economy. At present, agricultural livelihoods are being severely impacted as a result of anthropogenic global warming and climate change. Climate change has both direct and indirect effects on agricultural productivity, including changing rainfall patterns, severe drought, flooding, and changes in the geographical redistribution of pests and diseases. The expected decrease in agricultural production due to climate change will be 2.6% by 2050, relative to a 2011 baseline. While addressing critical issues such as poverty, food security, and access to health care and education. Clean energy, the creation of an additional carbon sink, and adaptation and resilience in sensitive sectors (agriculture,forestry, fisheries, water resources, and ecosystems) are the key priorities. Going by the projection for the Hingna block, where climate change will threaten food and nutritional security, water security (both surface and groundwater), displacement of the population due to climate hazards, migration of population from rural to urban areas, differentiated impacts on women.

Women in this area are the most vulnerable amongst the vulnerable. On one side they have to take care of home and children as also senior members of the family and on another, they also have to do agricultural work. Women do maximum agricultural work traditionally. But they do not have any decision-making authority in the family. Naturally, in society, she is not supposed to participate. These women do not have any property in their name. They do not even get any loans or benefits from any government schemes just because they do not possess the land in their names. In case the male counterpart commits suicide the whole burden along with the outstanding loan becomes the responsibility of the woman. In this situation, YRA wishes to focus on vulnerable women, help them to regain their power through integrated efforts of women farmers’ empowerment towards socio-economic transformation of these communities, and contribute to achieving Sustainable Agriculture and Sustainable Development Goals.

Project Goal: The overall goal of the project is to strengthen the resilience of 12 villages (6 existing & 6 new) to increase their adaptive capacity to climate change.

Objectives:

For Existing selected 6 villages

· To support 6 existing villages to be model villages to sustain the implemented activities.

• To ensure that assets created in the villages are operational, maintained, and used.
• To Support the creation of affordability mechanisms for access to services.

For Newly selected 6 villages

Objective 1

• To promote safe drinking water & Water conservation in project villages.
• To improve overall sanitation in project areas towards better health & hygienic practices, especially for women and girls

Activities

• Support all Gram Panchayats through IEC/BCC to ensure Sustainability through mobilization, capacity building, and usage of assets created
• Prepare & demonstrate a model Operation and Maintenance plan- a sustainable business model & ensure to include in GPDP
• Identify and train community leaders to facilitate the sustainability of Gram Panchayats
• Orientation of PRI members on model plans
• Engagement with Govt line department for convergence
• Monthly Engagement with people’s representatives from Village, GP, Block, and District levels. Monthly Meetings for the activity status and sustainability
• Regular monitoring of sustainability and discussion at the village level.

 Objectives for proposed new 6 villages

 Objective 1

• To promote safe drinking water & Water conservation in project villages.
• To improve overall sanitation in project areas towards better health & hygienic practices, especially for women and girls.

Objective-2:  The adaptive capacity of farmer families to the climate change-induced crisis has improved.

Objective-3: Climate Smart Villages develop 30 demonstration models for building climate resilience and include them in Gram Panchayat Development Plans and the District Action Plan on Climate Change.

Objective-4:  The capacity of small farmers & Women SHGs to adopt skill education and to promote the sustainable income generating activities is strengthened

Objective-5: To strengthen the existing Women Farmers Producer Company Ltd.