Community-led Adaptations: Water is Life

Significant climate impacts -- heat waves, wildfires, cloud bursts, cyclones, floods, droughts -- have begun to shake communities around the world. While experts and policy-makers debate causes and mitigation models, local communities, largely the poor and vulnerable, bear the consequences of such climate change. They struggle to find local solutions to adapt vigorously and minimize adverse consequences on their livelihoods and well-being.

Water is at the centre of these climate change impacts. Deforestation causes changes in rainfall patterns; chemicals used in intensive farming and urban over-usage (and wastage) cause depletion of groundwater; rapid commercialisation of coastal areas, wetlands and mangroves destroys natural water carrying systems. The pandemic of the past 18 months has hugely disrupted the global-supply chain, thereby raising questions about the relevance of universal policies, irrespective of contextual particularities.

Local communities in rural areas have been relying on their local resources to face the pandemic; they are using local technologies based on Indigenous knowledge for water harvesting, storage and distribution. The choice of crops, grazing of cattle and seasonality of migration are influenced by their knowledge of water, rainfall, and equitable practices of governance of water in and by the community.

PRIA’s interventions in the past have focused upon integrating local traditional water practices with government programmes on water management. Mobilising Gram Sabha in PESA areas for community-led governance of natural resources, including water and forests, has been documented and disseminated by PRIA. Building local capacity of panchayats and civil society to co-govern water bodies by integrating these in local planning has also been undertaken in several states.

As many community-led models of water governance have been marginalized through pre-pandemic policies, new efforts are required to reinvigorate community-led climate adaptation models. Fresh deliberations about policy and investment choices need to be undertaken simultaneously, if countries like India want to build back fairer and sustainably in post- pandemic recovery.

As Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) completed its 40 years, it brought together multiple stakeholders to learn from practices being developed and followed in community-led adaptation to ensure that the ‘source of life’ – water – is regenerated for future. PRIA’s samvad-conversation on “Community-led Adaptation: Water Is Life” on October 1, 2021  co-convened in partnership with International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Dhaka, Bangladesh and UNNATI - Organisation of Development Education, Ahmedabad, discussed the following questions:

• What methods and approaches have been effectively deployed in many current examples of community-governed water arrangements?
• What lessons, principles and strategies can be identified for more vigorous dissemination of community-led adaptation of water resources?

Click here for the webinar recording