T o cope with the multi-faceted adverse impacts of climate change and to build resilience, nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as a sustainable approach. It aids in addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss and livelihood vulnerabilities. In India, geographies like Bundelkhand have been highly vulnerable to climate change because of the ecological and socio-economic characteristics of these regions. In such scenarios, NbS can be used as a potentially effective solution to increase adaptation and climate change resilience of the communities and to derive environmental, economic and social benefits.

In Bundelkhand, Development Alternatives has implemented several NbS over the years engaging the local communities and other local stakeholders to strengthen their resilience as well as the resilience of the ecosystem. Some of those interventions were based on the models of Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), Wadi Sustainable Tribal Livelihoods and other practices of climate resilient agriculture. These included both hard and soft interventions comprising of construction land and water-based infrastructures, climate resilient farming practices, capacity building of local communities for better adoption of these practices, strengthening and developing community-based institutions for resource management and promotion of rural climate change communication. The climate change communication through community radio services in Bundelkhand has been done for information dissemination, solution exchange and problem-solving in the context of climate change adversities. The community radio programmes cater to around 250 villages surrounding Orchha in Bundelkhand.

In order to sustain the benefits of these interventions over a longer period of time and to scale up the interventions across different districts of Bundelkhand and other geographies of India, the strategy for designing and implementation of these NbS needs to be strengthened. The learnings derived from the implementations already made in Bundelkhand would help in that regard. Those are highlighted in the accompanying diagram (Figure 1). It holistically outlines difference phase of the NbS designing and implementation through use of different methods and tools.

• Inclusive participation of the members of the local community and other relevant stakeholders in the designing and implementation of NbS. Here, inclusivity is considered in terms of women’s participation, participation of SC/ST/other minority communities and landless farmers/resource users.

• Strengthening and building village/local level community institutions like watershed committee, SHGs, federations and networks is the key to sustainable management of resources. Capacity building of the members of these institutions for managerial skills, handling daily operations, finance and establishing their network with other relevant stakeholders in the system are some of the important components of it. Representation of different social and economic groups in these community institutions needs to be ensured.

• For implementation of Integrated Watershed Management Programme, the role of Panchayati Raj institutions is vital along with active involvement with other key stakeholders.

• Communication and information dissemination for better awareness about climate change issues, sustainable resource use and resource management practices, relevant sources of finance, scientific knowhow and establishment of common platform for knowledge/information sharing is important. Community radio can be one of the communication tools for this.

• Innovation and collation of examples of good practices are needed. It includes, low-cost and sustainable technological innovation, adoption of good practices from other geographies, use of GIS, climate change modelling and other relevant tools.

• Finally, collaboration, networking and policy advocacy are required for strengthening the capabilities and increasing efficiency in implementation of NbS. ■

Satabdi Datta
sdatta@devalt.org