Sustainability

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Download here: Rapid assessment report - Tilak Tajpur Panchayat

Forwarded to the Portal by: WinrockWater Yahoo Group Image and Content Courtesy: IWA Congress The IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition is a high-profile international event attracting thousands of water professionals and organizations from across the globe. It is a biennial event organised by the International Water Association and previously hosted by Vienna, Beijing, Marrakech, Melbourne, Berlin and Paris. Montreal will be hosting the upcoming session from the 19^th to 24^th of September 2010. The IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition, the Associations main biennial event, is a valuable and unique opportunity for the community of world-leading water professionals to meet, exchange ideas, explore the state of the art and debate the key issues underlying the science and practice of water. It is also where the entire water community congregates and in particular IWA specialist groups showcase their work and plan for future activities.

This article is about an experiment taken up by Sambhaav Trust with communities in Barmer (district of Rajasthan), which tells us about the development of the rural area and how to bring about self sustainability to rural society. Readers may kindly write in with their feedback in the comments or to portal@arghyam.org. Comments & emails will be forwarded to Sambhaav Trust by the India Water Portal.

Introduction

The word rural is synonymous with backwardness in the eyes of the upper urban community. A general impression that has been created is that people living in rural areas are economically poor, uneducated, do not have any sense of business, are not hardworking and hence they are much below those who live in urban areas who are monetarily rich. This perception is a biased one. We have never asked ourselves - what are the indicators that make a man backward or advanced? We have measured everything in terms of monetary advancement. In our experience there are a number of indicators one can associate with development like social, political, value system etc. It is therefore important that we check our perception before we talk of rural development. We are not debating on the urban-rural divide. However, from our experience in the rural field we believe that if we are interested in national development and not just sectoral development, then it is essential to assess the potentiality of the rural sector to move forward. Our contention is that this potentiality has not been probed into. On the contrary, a policy to downgrade this sector continues year after year. We have to broaden our perception if we truly want a just state.

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December this year in Copenhagen the countries of the world are going to sign a treaty that will change our life as we know it. Their commitments today will affect our quality of life tomorrow.

A sharing workshop on groundwater organised by ACWADAM (Advanced Center for Water Development and Management) in Pune on 21/22nd May 2009 saw some very good presentations being made. Dr Tushaar's Shah's keynote speech provided an amazing big picture of groundwater use in agriculture. The presentation can be viewed on slideshare and the entire speech is available on YouTube in 4 parts.

Forwarded to the Portal by:Priyanka Kohli, ALC Image and Content Courtesy: ALC Access Livelihoods Consulting India Pvt. Ltd. is a development management organisation comprising a group of self motivated and passionate consultants with prime focus on enabling the promotion of Sustainable livelihoods for poor. ALC India organises as well as conducts Capacity building programmes for various organisations. ALC has published the Capacity Building programme Calendar for the financial year 2009-2010. The annual training calendar can be accessed here:ALC Annual Training Calendar

Image & Content Courtesy: ALC India ALC India has announced a 4-day National Level Training Program on "Risk Management For Promotion of Sustainable Livelihoods"from 07th - 10th July 2009 at Patna (Bihar).This program targets the middle & senior level functionaries of NGOs, CBOs and development professionals. The medium of instruction during the program is English.

The overall objective of training is to address the rural and urban poor risks at household and individual levels. The focus is to address the vulnerability caused by the agriculture losses, improper decision making process at household and community level, market instability, losses due to natural disaster, illness and wage loss. The overall objective is to sensitize the participants about the risk management practices for existing /emerging livelihoods of poor.

The expected outcomes of the training are: 1. To develop clear understanding of livelihood risk & vulnerability in development context. 2. To enhance skills in designing program strategies to better cope with risks of poor. 3. To help develop capacities related to business planning and enterprise risk management for promoting livelihoods of poor.

The national seminar on “Changing geohydrological scenario in the hard rock terrain in India”, was jointly organised by the Geological Society of India, Department of Mines and Geology, Central Ground Water Board, Karnataka Jal Biradari and Karnataka Institute of Cooperative Management.