Project Outline
The project has adopted a participatory approach involving multi stakeholders for achieving its goals. The pilot phase will be conducted in the drylands of Maharashtra, India over a span of two years with appropriate engagement of stakeholders, including vulnerable communities and policy makers, and define the processes by means of which capacities can also be assessed and built at various levels. This includes using participatory approaches for risk characterisation at the community level, understanding the need for adaptation, enabling conditions to implement adaptation and measuring its effectiveness. This approach will provide a solid basis for replication of CBA beyond the project period and pilot sites. The project focuses on agriculture and water resources in the drylands.
This pilot project can provide critical insights on the current understanding on the exposure to extremes and can guide adoption of disaster risk reduction and adaptation strategies at the community level. The project will build upon TERI’s and AFPRO’s established relationships and agreements at the state level in India to support policy work. The three CIENS institutions - each with leading national expertise in different fields, will provide international experience and competence. The project will demonstrate how research results can be used to develop adaptation strategies at the local level. State-of-the-art methods for integrated risk, adaptation and vulnerability assessments and observations from the field will guide the work. The central tenet of this methodology is the involvement of stakeholders in research on social and environmental impacts of climate change to foster the creation of policy -relevant knowledge. Stakeholder involvement brings social issues, such as gender, poverty, livelihoods, and social capital, to the centre stage, enabling analysis of barriers to adaptation at different institutional levels. Inclusion of these underlying social issues in the approach highlights the importance of considering multiple stressors, both ecological and social, which is unique with regard to research on extreme events and adaptation in India. The project is organized into seven interlinked Work Packages (WPs).
Work Package 1 and 2 focuses on assessment of the extreme events and extreme impacts on the biophysical side. While description of the impacts based on down-scaling of climate scenarios at finer resolutions will be done in WP 1, Work package 2 will assess the vulnerabilities of ecosystems to these risks. The implications on social systems will be analysed in Work Package 3, emphasising key vulnerabilities with reference to local adaptation capacities and options, and barriers to adaptation in the policy and governance systems. Work Package 4 further evaluates different adaptation options, and addresses the development of risk management and adaptation strategies, and emphasises the coordination of means and measures at the local, state and national levels in a participatory manner. Work Package 5 aims at putting the findings of the project into practice through stakeholder engagement, capacity building and dissemination of results to policy makers, practitioners, civil society, farming communities and the scientific community. This being a pilot project, Work Package 6 will design a long-term institutional cooperation program with a focus on other regions in India wherein the experiences from the pilot program can be applied on a larger scale. Work Package 7 is set aside for administration and project management.
Rationale of the project
Nearly 300 million people inhabiting the dryland regions of India are dependent on agriculture for livelihoods and sustenance.
read moreObjectives
Project goal: The main goal of the project is to assess the enabling conditions for effective community-based adaptation to the impact of extreme events at the community level.
read moreExpected Outcomes
The Key expected outcomes of the pilot phase of this project are
Outcome 1: Improved understanding of extreme climate exposure and vulnerability in drylands among scientific community and target groups- including policymakers, practitioners and vulnerable communities
Project Partners
