Reversing environmental degradation and rural poverty through adaptation to climate change in drought stricken areas in South India: a Hydrological Unit Pilot Project Approach

The goal of the project was to enable the resource poor farming communities to practice sustainable land and water management for optimizing livelihoods and improving food and income security in the deccan plateau region of southern India.

The specific objective was capacity building of farmers groups, farmers networks, farmers federation, participating NGOs and other development actors in sustainable land and ecosystem management for improved livelihoods.

The project has been structured into three main components:

• information tools for decision making and local institutional capacity development;
• pilots on adaptation measures integrated into sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices; and 
• platform for scaling up climate change adaptation measures suitable for drought prone areas.

The main project activities were:

• baseline study on local and scientific knowledge on climate impacts, participatory climate monitoring (PCM);
• setting up of community based organizations (CBOs) (referred to in the project as Climate Change Adaptation Committees); and
  
• farmer climate schools,  sustainable land and water management (SLWM) pilots, documentation and dissemination.

The biggest accomplishment of the project was that it was able to successfully demonstrate integration of climate change adaptation in sustainable land and water management in drought-prone areas through innovative farmer driven grass-root level environmental action, contributing to improved soil organic matter to improve soil organic carbon while raising agricultural productivity, improving livelihoods, and protecting critical ecosystems.

The main achievements of the project against each of its stated outcomes have been:

• information tools and local institutional capacities developed for farmers and CBOs to make informed decisions on land and water management based on scientific and local knowledge, taking into account impacts of climate variations:
• a study on local and scientific knowledge on impacts of climate variability/change on natural resources was completed;
• participatory climate monitoring systems, run by farmers, covering key climate variability and impact parameters has been made operational; and
  
• Community based organizations (CBOs) (referred to in the project as Climate Change Adaptation Committees have been built at the habitation and hydrological unit level.