Commenting on the sessions, Mr. Prakash Keskar, Executive Director, WOTR, said, “Farmers of the country are facing a serious danger from climate change. Irregular rainfall is a climate change-related problem affecting farm production significantly. The small and marginal farmers have been losing crops and incomes due to irregular rainfall patterns over the past few years. Therefore, there is an acute need to educate them to tackle such unfavourable scenarios. We received an overwhelming response to the educational webinars from the farmers and look forward to hosting more informative events in future.”

“In order to support the farming communities, we have upgraded our FarmPrecise app to allow them to be informed about the weather conditions based on prior rainfall data and make appropriate choices,” he added.

Along with WOTR representatives, Mr. Manikrao Khule (Ret. Meteorologist, IMD) and Mr. Vivek Kale, Branch Manager, Central Bank of India, also participated in the webinars and instructed the farmers on facing irregular rainfall in the area. Mr. Khule highlighted the key aspects of intermittent rainfall, its impact on agriculture, and multiple ways to deal with the challenges of such erratic patterns. During this webinar, Mr. Vivek Kale, Branch Manager, Central Bank of India, informed the farmers about the crop loans available for the next Kharif season and the various processes involved in availing agriculture financing schemes offered by the public sector banks.

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1. Building resilience

The emerging need as seen from my work with the rural communities is for identifying easily accessible/adaptable technologies that help rural communities and vulnerable population groups in becoming more resilient to uncertainties. This will be a key tenet of a larger holistic approach to uplift rural communities which includes rejuvenating the ecosystems and environment, generating livelihoods, promoting climate resilient agricultural practices, empowering the women of the communities by equipping them with knowledge and skills to earn livelihood and also look after the health and nutrition of both themselves and their children. This approach will ensure a sustainable development of the villages and the communities making them more resilient.

2. CSR collaborations

We are now witnessing a shift in the CSR approach to the social sector with more flexibility being offered to the organisations to work on bringing in a holistic development of the communities. CSR organisations are becoming more open to working collaboratively with other donors to ensure all the needs of the communities are met. The pandemic required many organisations to repurpose and redirect the funds allocated to certain projects in order to address the immediate needs of the community and the sector has seen the donor ecosystem become more accommodating to these requests while maintaining the CSR mandates.

3. Local livelihood generation

Livelihood generation, as a theme is also expected to see a shift as communities are demanding more local livelihood generation activities as the traditional migratory practices for earning livelihoods came to a standstill during the pandemic with an added layer of health hazards associated with it. Organisations are now concentrating on building capacities of the rural communities for self-employment and setting up small alternate income generation activities within their villages to make the communities more self-sufficient and also identify markets in the neighbourhood villages for added incomes. The communities are being encouraged to form groups and work in a community model to ensure all the businesses thrive with community support and the challenges of the villages are addressed locally through the groups.

To conclude, the non-profit sector has been one of the quickest and most resilient sectors to adapt to the emerging needs of the community and come up with innovative solutions to try and support the most vulnerable groups through the pandemic. These efforts have been well received by the donor segment and resulted in mindset-shifts in the way CSR was looked at.

These two segments of the development sector, working cohesively, will lead to building a resilient and empowered community.

Prakash Keskar has been the Executive Director for WOTR since April 2019. Prakash has over 25 years of experience in the development sector – 21 years of which have been in WOTR, across various levels and geographies.

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Marking its 28th foundation day recently, the Pune-based social welfare organisation announced that it has executed rural development and ecosystem-based adaptation programmes for communities in 5387 villages in the last 28 years. These include various community-led programmes in Water & Land Management, Agriculture, livelihood generation, women empowerment, and health, sanitation & nutrition.

Since its establishment, WOTR has been working towards watershed development and ecosystems restoration, climate resilient sustainable agriculture, integrated and efficient water management and climate change adaptation, with a special emphasis on building resilience of vulnerable communities, farmers, and women. WOTR works with communities across nine states–Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and Bihar to empower and uplift the lives of rural people by uniting and organizing them towards common issues – land degradation and water scarcity to bring sustainable development.

Talking about the work WOTR has done since the beginning, Prakash Keskar, Executive Director, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) said, “Our organisation is committed to building the resilience of vulnerable rural communities to Climate Change by enhancing the availability of water, increasing the productivity of land and agriculture, diversifying livelihoods, empowering women, and strengthening the health and well-being. Empowering 45 lakh community membersis not a number to tell the world but a motivation to keep on working to support rural communities and restore degraded ecosystems.”

WOTR has consistently been enabling communities through its various programmes. Under its rural development work, the organisation has directly impacted 28 lakh villagers in 3372 villages while reached out to 17 lakh men and women in 2015 village in association with its partners.

Under the weather and farm based agro advisory initiative, WOTR has installed 131 agro-met stations in four states to provide weather and agriculture related advisory over one lakh farmers in 1078 villages. The NGO also launched a unique app FarmPrecise in December 2019 to help the farming community with farm specific and customized crop-weather advisories.

As a part of its safe water programme, WOTR installed water filtration units in 272 villages which benefitted over 99,000 people. 221 units were set up in schools of 175 villages to serve 22,003 students. With an aim to empower women in rural areas, WOTR also facilitated the formation of 15,690 women self-help groups (SHGs) which supported 1,93,000 women to earn their livelihood across the states. With its watershed development and climate change adaptation-based interventions WOTR covered 15,26,476 hectares of land and helped over 26 lakh people.

Keeping an eye on climate change with commitment to sustainable development, WOTR also lays strong emphasis on research, learning and evidence-based policy advocacy. The WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies (W-CReS), established in 2016 conducts rigorous, application-oriented studies on the key thematic areas that WOTR is engaged in, with collaboration of all stakeholders. In addition, training, and capacity building by WOTR and W-CReS have impacted over 566,000 people from 27 states of India and 63 countries.

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The initiative aims to pool resources – human, material, and financial – to help communities become self-sufficient in the face of climate change. A virtual event to mark the launch saw participation from various dignitaries in the Government, international and national development organisations, the private sector, and institutions involved in studying Climate change.

Elaborating on ECOBARI’s vision, Marcella D’Souza, Director, WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies, said, “We all live in an ecosystem. ECOBARI is a wonderful term in which bari means home in many Indian languages. Through this collaborative approach our vision is to empower communities to sustainably regenerate and manage their ecosystems, conserve biodiversity, derive resilient incomes and improve their quality of life through nature-based solutions, as they adapt to climate change. We hope to realise this vision by being a leading platform that grounds Ecosystem-based Adaptation at scale through multi-stakeholder partnerships, policy enablement and resource provisioning, so as to contribute to the country’s SDGs, the Land Degradation Neutrality targets and climate change commitments.”

Describing the purpose and membership for ECOBARI, Arjuna Srinidhi, Thematic Lead, Climate Change Adaptation, WOTR, said, “This collaborative is not just meant for NGOs. It is an open forum for all – whether you represent a scientific institution, a government body, a corporate, a financial institution, or a part of civil society. The collaborative will be engaged in generating evidence through case-studies, training and capacity building programs, interdisciplinary research and policy advocacy. We will also be engaged in novel and cutting-edge action that can bridge the science, policy, practice and business interfaces to upscale Ecosystem based Adaptation to climate change in India and beyond.”

As a part of the virtual launch event, a panel discussion was organised around ‘How collaboration amongst varied stakeholders can help realise several national goals – SDGs and the Paris Agreement’. The panel, with participation from Dr Ashok Dalwai – CEO, NRAA, Namita Vikas -Founder and MD, auctusESG, Shannon Olsson – Global Director, The Echo Network and Dr. Milind Mujumdar – Scientist, IITM Pune, and Sandhya Edlabadkar, President, Jagrut Mahila Samaj, expressed their views on the need for ecosystem based adaptation amid the ongoing climate crisis. A short film on EbA (Ecosystem based Adaptation) and its execution was also featured at the online event.

Talking about the urgent need to address climate Change, Jigmet Takpa, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said, “Collective action is the pressing need of the hour to address ecosystem degradation and climate change. India’s focus has always been on sustainable and equitable growth.”

In a video message, Vandana Chavan – MP Rajya Sabha, said, “Climate Change is around us. Despite several resolutions and policies in the past, we didn’t take this issue seriously. Now, we should adopt a collaborative approach to make our ecosystem intact. This collaborative approach will help us in creating a better future for our next generations.”

“This is not the time to push this issue for tomorrow, as it is already too late but this is the time for us to really join hands to work towards the cause. Sustenance and restoration of ecosystems is essential and should be married with people’s need to pursue sustainable livelihoods. ECOBARI is a great initiative in that regard,” she added.

Other participants stressed the importance of generating and disseminating climate information at the grassroots level, providing rapid financial support to innovative projects on a global scale, parallel efforts by government and research organisations, and capacity building at the village level, all of which are geared toward fostering ecosystem services for the benefit of rural communities.

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This was to honour Father Hermann Bacher who dedicated his entire life for water conservation and the welfare of underprivileged communities in Maharashtra. Popularly known as the ‘father of community-led watershed development in India’, Father Bacher passed away on 14th September in Switzerland.

The event was held to mark the 16th anniversary of the tree plantation drive launched by the late Bhausaheb Thorat, a stalwart of the Cooperative movement in Maharashtra and founder of the Sangamner Sugar Factory. At the event, Balasaheb Thorat, said, “We are calling these hills Herman Hills since Father Herman Bacher has worked extensively on watershed development programmes in this region, assisting farmers in improving the quality of life and making water available. Furthermore, he has consistently urged people to plant more trees”.

Who is Father Hermann Bacher?

Known as the ‘father of people-led watershed development’ in India, Father Bacher ensured involvement of local communities in each project for smooth implementation of various activities by putting equal emphasis on social and technical aspects.
In 1993, he co-founded together with Crispino Lobo, WOTR (Watershed Organisation Trust), a Pune based non-profit that engages at the intersection of practice, knowledge and policy across scales and in collaboration with stakeholders from across sectors. WOTR has now grown into a globally recognised organisation that has impacted over 4.3 million people in India and provided training and capacity building to people across 63 countries.

Father Bacher was born in Switzerland and later on moved to Maharashtra. He dedicated his life to the welfare of rural communities and regeneration of natural resources by identifying drought prone areas and initiating integrated watershed management projects in various villages. Father Bacher was widely regarded and respected as a true ‘man of God’ for his selfless service to the poor who called him ‘Bacher Baba’.

Aditya Thackeray, Minister for Environment and Tourism, Vishwajeet Kadam, Minister of Co-operation, Agriculture, Social Justice, Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs, Minorities Development and Marathi Language; Sadashiv Lokhande, Member of Parliament, Dr. Sudhir Tambe, MLC, and other public figures participated in the occasion. The event was attended by over 2,000 people.

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