Miss. Sharmi Shanmuganathan, Gender Development Officer and Acting Social Safeguarded Officer, Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project, (CSIAP), talks about CSIAP and its current activities on Tamil National Service, Thendral FM and Yaal FM at 7.30am on 16th Nov 2020.
Please click to listen: Tamil Service at SLBC
Recognizing rural women as ‘farmers’ and as ‘leaders’in adopting climate resilience agriculture technology and practices
The World Bank funded “Climate Smart irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP)” targets farmers in climatically vulnerable hotpot areas to improve the productivity and resilience of smallholder agriculture activities. As part of the project’s strategic and operational design, it seeks to address gender gaps and risks in order to empower women as ‘farmers’ and as ‘leaders’ in their communities for adopting climate resilience practices.
During the project preparation and assessment phase, many issues were identified which limits and prevents women from equitably benefiting from and participating in agriculture activities. These issues include: lack of land and asset ownership which limits women’s ability to engage and grow their agricultural production and livelihoods (e.g. in Sri Lanka, only 16 % of all privately-owned land belongs to women)[1], lack of access to climate smart agriculture production technologies and marketing, lack of decision-making power as most of the farmer organizations are led by male farmers, inability to fully participate in agriculture activities due household and care responsibilities, additional requirements to hire labour, difficulties in traveling to agriculture lands which are generally away from residential locations, greater risks of impact from the Human elephant conflict (HEC) as women mostly engage in cultivation work during day time when HEC is most prevalent and impacts linked to domestic abuse/gender based violence with increased consumption of alcohol by men. With all these setbacks for rural women, the current COVID pandemic situation increases their vulnerability affecting household income, food security and nutrition.
The project has taken multiplicity of actions to ensure the inclusion rural women in project activities. Thus the project has taken measures to:
1.
reformulate
project strategies during COVID19 period to implement several subprojects
specially targeting rural women farmers to ensure their food and nutrition
security.
2.
assess
gender gaps, issues and risks during participatory rural needs assessments and
social screening.
3.
incorporate
measures in hot-spot area development plans and social impact management plans to
ensure women’s participation and inclusion.
4.
revise
beneficiary selection criteria to be inclusive giving priority to women
beneficiaries including vulnerable groups (such as women who are living under
the poverty level, widows, families with young children and those living with
elderly & disable persons)
5.
establish
minimum targets for female beneficiaries in project interventions
6.
build
capacities of project staff on gender issues and sensitize communities (both
males and females) on principals of gender equity in line with the training
manual developed.
7.
build
capacities of women on climate-resilient agricultural technologies
8.
support
to address risks of Human-Elephant conflict
9.
provide
support to purchases assets, hire labour and access services (such as credit,
childcare facilities, etc.)
10. strengthen links with
community-based organizations to receive project implementation support
11. implement GBV prevention
measures (i.e. Code of Conduct for Communities etc.) and strengthen GRM
reporting measures for GBV.
12. increase women's
engagement in decision making in Farmer’s Organizations, Producer’s Groups
& Social Audit Committees including acting on issues affecting them
Over 5,500 rural women farmers involved climate resilience agriculture practices
CSIAP strategies that are formulated
and are being implemented have generated favorable outcomes for rural women
farmers to ensure these groups are benefiting from climate resilience
agriculture practices in an equitable manner. Therefore, in addition to
increasing participation of women in project activities, the project has exceeded
its target of 30% of beneficiaries to be women in all its programs and is also
successfully implementing programs targeting 100% women as beneficiaries through
its climate smart nutrition sensitive home gardening program.
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Mr Sisira Semasinghe, Agriculture Extension Specialist |
The Yala 2020 is designed to promote the Other Field Crops cultivation among the farming community in hot spot areas of the 11 districts of the island said Mr Sisira Semasinghe, Agriculture Extension Specialist of Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP) with an exclusive interview with Lakhanda News on 11th August 2020.
This Yala 2020 covers the area of more than 3,600Ac of OFC (Groundnut, green gram, cowpea, chilli, maize, soya, red onion, kurakkan, sesame and Blake Gram are grown) cultivating lands of the country. Farmers who will be involving with the project have been familiar with the cultivation of OFCs and involving with the cultivation of OFCs for production purposes. The lessons learned by implementing the project in this season will be applied to correct mistakes in the coming seasons. In order to achieve the objectives of the programme, many strategies have been planned to be implemented by the CSIAP with implementing agencies.
Please click Lakhanda Newsto listen
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| Mr Sisira Semasinghe, Agriculture Extension Specialist |
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| Mr. I. H. Dharmasekara, Deputy Project Director, CSIAP is addressing the audience |
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| Symbolically, the District Secretary receives the first groundnut harvest |
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| The Field Day Demonstration |