The goal of the project is to empower poor communities in rural areas to undertake and maintain integrated watershed management activities, with the aim of increasing their incomes and protecting their natural resources.

The project’s objectives include:

• Strengthening the capacity of rural communities and their service providers to manage the watershed sustainably
• Providing the resources local communities need to implement watershed management plans

The project targets poor smallholders, who depend mainly on upland crops and lowland rice cultivation for their livelihoods. In the lowlands the primary target will be women, and for upland conservation farming it will be men, women and youth. Twenty years of experience in lowland development confirm that 85 per cent of those who benefit will be women and marginalized groups. The aim is to provide a model for funding and implementation of community-driven land and water management activities, such as water retention, upland conservation and swamp access works, so that the model can be scaled up in future projects. The project uses a demand-driven approach, with active participation by poor rural people in planning and implementation. Activities will be initiated in the lowlands and will progressively include the uplands, to eventually cover the whole watershed.

The project will build the capacity of communities to set up village farmers’ committees, and district and watershed farmers’ associations, and to develop watershed management plans. It mainstreams issues related to gender, youth, malaria, HIV/AIDS and environmental monitoring, and fosters collaboration among partners. In collaboration with the IFAD-funded Rural Finance Project, it also promotes use of rural credit.

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Source: IFAD