The Char Development and Settlement Project IV will help reduce poverty and hunger for poor people living on newly accreted coastal islands (known locally as chars). Its goal is to provide improved and more secure livelihoods for 28,000 households in coastal chars, who will benefit from the development of water management, communications, water supply, cyclone protection and other infrastructure.

The project will adopt an integrated approach to coastal zone development and will:

• support water resource management to protect land on three of the five chars from tidal and storm surges, improve drainage and enhance land accretion.
• finance climate-resilient infrastructure for communications, access to markets, cyclone protection, potable water and sanitation in all five chars.
• seek to obtain secure land titles for 20,000 households. This will involve surveys to assess availability of land and current ownership status and the selection of target group households, followed by a process of land titling, which will include improvements to the land record system.
• seek to improve livelihoods and household resilience. Agriculture support will aim to enable farmers to make better use of land resources.
• support the establishment of a single technical assistance team that will, in particular, be responsible for learning and disseminating lessons for coastal zone development and planning the future development of new chars.

The project will also provide additional support to the more disadvantaged sections of the community such as:

• landless settlers who do not have proper title to the land they are now occupying;
• other landless households that can be settled on any public land that is now vacant; and
• women, who will be particularly targeted for NGO activities and for participation in labour contracting societies (LCSs).

Source: IFAD