Community Empowerment Facility Profile

BACKGROUND

Five years ago and after a 20-year struggle, a poor village in the Mau district of Uttar Pradesh, succeeded on obtaining ownership of the village’s main source of income and livelihood, the local lake, known as Tal Ratoy. The determined village Committee, representing the local fisher folk and boat people, were awarded 730 acres of lake lands, their access to which had been previously insecure.

Having gained access rights to the lake, the local villages face a classical situation of overcoming constraints as well as the need to gain other assets to make more productive use of the resource. In their case, this involves draining the shallower half of the lake to obtain 730 hectares of lake bed to be used for cultivation, thus providing an alternative source of income. The principal constraints identified by the Social Development Foundation (SDF), an NGO partner with the community, include declining fish stocks, water levels, water quality (due to pollutants such as fertilizer run-off) as well as other problems associated with poor environmental management, and, finally, the lack of effective marketing strategies to maximize their returns on fish sales.

The community, SDF and a local NGO partner organization, Amar Shaheed Chetana Sansthan, formed an alliance to strengthen the capacity of the 1,000 subsistence fisher folk to sustainably manage the lake and its surrounding lands by gaining the other factors to improve productivity and access to markets with emphasis on building strong community organizations to defend the community’s long-term access rights to the lake and the related income activities.

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GOAL AND OBJECTIVES

The overall goal is the economic and social empowerment of this very poor fishing community by improving the community’s management of both the watershed and fish stocks with the aim of increasing household incomes and food security from expanded agriculture and the marketing of fish. The project follows the watershed concept for resource management which will involve draining about half of the lake which is currently so shallow, that it offers little potential for fishing, while at the same time, undertaking work to deepen other parts of the lake in order to increase fish supplies.

While the community persevered through the struggle to gain access to the lake, they need stronger skills in decision-making, more technical knowledge on how to best use the lake and how the related lands and watershed can be most efficiently and sustainably exploited and maintained. This includes strengthening the role of women who could play an important role in improving household incomes from fishing and fish marketing activities.

The SDF has been active in the District for over five years working in the areas of human rights and land literacy to make people aware of and how to proactively obtain their rights. This partnership with local people resulted in a high level of trust between SDF, the local NGO partner and the village Committee. The SDF will manage the project but will progressively turn responsibility to the community for implementing project activities.

The SDF will recruit outside experts to conduct training and provide technical advice to assist the fishing community. As community development facilitators, SDF will ensure that the recommendations and advice provided by these experts is fully integrated into the community to ensure continuity of the knowledge and practices. The project will include a series of community-based workshops be implemented using the labour of community people to carry out the lake-based and watershed management activities.

The village committee is a cornerstone for the success of this project. It has emerged from years of struggle and is seen by the beneficiaries as being representative. The strengthening of this and other community structures will be the basis for sustainability.

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WHO WILL BENEFIT?

The direct beneficiaries will be the 1000 fisher folk and their families living in 22 villages who have been given the legal rights to the lake, most who are from the lowest castes in Indian society and are thus amongst the poorest, earning incomes of less than US$ 25 per month. Aside from selling their labour outside the community, the lake is their main source of income and most promising possibility to improve their household well-being.

The project will use local and national expertise in order to take advantage of local knowledge and experience, but to also increase the community’s contacts outside their direct area which will form relationships that may be valuable for their future activities.

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CONCLUSION

Past experience indicates that sustainable human development depends on the active involvement of the beneficiary communities in the design and implementation of projects thereby ensuring that real needs, as seen by the people concerned, are at the centre of any intervention. This project represents an example of a community which has already achieved a major success in working together to achieve ownership of its main asset, the local lake. It builds on the firm ground of past achievement. On the other hand, despite ownership of the major resource, the community remains very poor and its primary asset is steadily declining in value due to lack of adequate management and planning, combined with environmental degradation. By supporting this project, International Land Coalition hopes to use the engine of earlier success to achieve further results since the beneficiaries have the incentive of registered access and tenure security to the lake as a basis to invest in its future productive potential. If successful, similar approaches could be used by local NGOs involved in other communities. The lessons may be in building cohesive community purpose based on shared reliance on common natural resources.

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