|
DHAN FOUNDATION: POLICY PAPER 2
RESTORING
LIVELIHOODS:
1. INTRODUCTION
Tsunami was considered as one of the three biggest natural calamities that affected India in the last 5 years. Orissa cyclone, Bhuj earthquake and the South East Asian tsunami left great challenges to mankind to address relief, restoration of livelihoods and reconstruction of habitat in such a large scale. Restoring the livelihoods of affected communities require concerted efforts among various players like communities, NGOs, government and the markets. Fishery, farming and trading communities lost their livelihoods and pushed to indebtedness due to tsunami since most of their assets have been financed by either formal or informal financial institutions. Since unattended vulnerability push affected people to perpetual poverty, the response of the government and NGOs to the restoration of livelihoods has to be swift, coordinated and well targeted.
It is high time to classify the affected families in to three broad categories like affected, moderately affected and severely affected. Based on the scientific damage assessment at the grassroots, government has to freeze the rehabilitation package and the implementation should be done in partnership with NGOs and community organizations.
Any meaningful rehabilitation program should take in to consideration the sectoral and conservation perspective. Majority of the affected coastal communities depend on fishery, farming and livestock based livelihoods. In the light of the above condition, this paper analyses the options and opportunities available to rebuild the lives and livelihoods of the tsunami affected communities.
2. IMPACT ASSESSMENT INDICATORS: RESTORING LIVELIHOODS
The impact of the tsunami devastation is felt in the social, physical (with respect to people only, infrastructure damage in the villages is not considered), economical, psychological, environmental and technological aspects. The ongoing rehabilitation program should be comprehensive enough to address these problems in all aspects.
The table 1 gives various dimensions, objectives, activities and verifiable indicators of the tsunami impact in the field. It is not that each and every institution should work in all the aspects. Based on the expertise of the institution each can prefer to work in the specific aspect to attain the objectives mentioned. However, if some organizations decide to work comprehensively it can be allowed. 3. FRAMEWORK FOR VALUE CREATION: RESTORING SECTOR BASED LIVELIHOODS
Livelihoods restoration requires the proper understanding of the indigenous systems and practices that exist in the coastal areas among fishery, farming and animal husbandry based livelihoods. However, modern practices can be incorporated wherever possible only after the acceptance by the communities. We have to appreciate the need to maintain diversity in various types of livelihoods as part of the sustainable livelihoods perspective. For example, sudden moves by government or NGOs to replace catamarans with fiber boats would affect ecology and the specific needs of the catamaran based livelihoods. This issue is applicable to farming, trading and animal husbandry based livelihoods.
The proposed framework on value creation integrates a few of the critical components in restoring livelihoods. Community infrastructure, production machinery, technology, marketing, skill building and building forward and backward linkages are the key components identified that requires focus in restoring livelihoods. Compensating the affected families alone definitely will not help to hasten the restoration of livelihoods processes. In this scenario, option before the development community is addressing these issues creatively by closely working with coastal communities since the government may not agree to integrate all the components as part of the rehabilitation package.
3.1 Building Community Infrastructure: Enabling community driven restoration of livelihoods Restoration of livelihoods should be community driven. It can be addressed only through structured grass root processes. Wherever organized fishermen societies do not exist, NGOs can promote such societies towards addressing short, medium and long term objectives of fishermen communities. Based on the local context and the socio economic relationships fisher men who own catamaran, vallam and boats can be jointly or separately organized. NGOs work with only relief and rehabilitation objective can forge alliances with the long term focused NGOs in the area. Hence, the components of promotion, strengthening and facilitating of community organizations in the long term can be taken care.
Farmers need to be organized towards renovation of village tanks, farm ponds and agriculture development. People who depend on animal husbandry can be organized based on the specific activities like dairy, goat, poultry and such other activities.
3.2 Production Machinery: Appreciating Diversity
3.2.1 Fishing Machinery: Fishermen in Tamil Nadu broadly use hand sailing catamarans, catamarans fitted with small motor, vallams and fiber boats though there is variation in the capacity of mechanized boats. Each category of fishermen target specific fish varieties and their reach in the sea is also restricted due to the type of the boat and engine. We found that there are more than eight types of nets are used in the Kancheepuram coastal villages.
The moves by NGOs and government to completely replace catamarans with the fiber boats can be discouraged. However, support can be provided to convert all the hand sailing catamarans to motor based catamarans. Wherever possible collective ownership of boats can be provided and this process should be facilitated through fishermen federations.
Table 2: Types of nets and its prices:
3.2.2 Agriculture Lands and Irrigation Infrastructure: Soil experts categorized the affected agriculture lands in to three broad categories namely affected, moderately affected and severely affected. Soil reclamation measures should be designed based on the condition of the soil quality of the specific field. Though a few experts advised the affected lands through leaching by fresh water, this may not give required benefits to the immediate restoration of agriculture. Hence, area based soil reclamation package should be devised and implementation should be done in the appropriate season.
Renovation of village tanks, drainage channels and farm ponds should be one of the core components in the restoration of livelihoods program. Cash for work program can be combined with the renovation program. Since agriculture development can take place only after soil reclamation and renovation of supply system, these works can be finished in a time bound manner.
Government has to allocate sufficient resources to the renovation of irrigation infrastructure. However this program can be implemented through NGOs and Public Works Department.
3.2.3 Livestock: Tsunami devastated the livestock assets like cow, goats and backyard poultry in many of the coastal villages. People who lost their livestock should not left out in the rehabilitation program. Village wise list of loss of livestock need to be prepared and the financial support should be adequate to restore their livelihoods to the pre tsunami situation.
3.3 Technology: Incorporating Best Practices This is an opportunity to introduce new technologies in fishery, farming and animal husbandry sectors. At the outset an expert team can be set up to identify the appropriate technologies and best practices to implement at the grass root level. Establishment of godowns for storing the fish, grains and other value added products can be considered in the affected coastal areas. The coastal warning systems elsewhere in the world can be studied and integrated with the village information centers. Fishermen can get information on fish available areas, tsunami, cyclones, flood and other relevant information. Farmers can be provided data related to rainfall, seed varieties including hybrid ones, prices of various agricultural commodities and input prices.
Dry land agriculture and coastal horticulture can be given priority while promoting agriculture in the coastal areas. Intercropping and mixed cropping have been tried in order to earn complementary income.
As far as livestock based livelihoods are concerned fodder development is a crucial aspect. Hence, common lands to be identified with the help of local communities and fodder can be developed adequately based on the need of the village. Cross breeding can also be facilitated by making available hybrid cows and goats either in the veterinary centers or individual owned cross breeding centers.
3.4 Marketing: Exploring new markets and strengthening existing markets Exploitative market practices were found common in various sector based livelihoods in the coastal areas. Middlemen, monopoly buyers and moneylenders have exploited fishermen in the villages. Commission shops and moneylenders have also exploited farmers. Hence by organizing and strengthening local fishermen cooperatives these issues can be overcome. Government may come out with a special incentive package in the affected coastal villages to encourage exports of fish and agriculture produces. Local fish markets can be restructured.
As far as agriculture produce is concerned opportunities for value addition can be explored. Based on this a few families can be supported to initiate processing food items in a small scale.
3.5 Skill Building: Strengthening coping competencies of coastal communities Among the affected communities available skills should be identified. Based on the carrying capacity of the particular livelihoods in the villages interested families can be given opportunity to pursue new activities. Care should be taken in facilitating right activities to such households. If required handholding and complementary activity support can be given to those families. However this exercise cannot be rushed. Reskilling and complementary skilling can be pursued to the selected families. Families who own marginal land holdings can be supported to initiate allied activities like animal husbandry.
3.6 Building Forward and Backward Linkages: Integrating with mainstream Land to lab program should be initiated and strengthened with respect to all kinds of livelihoods. Especially in the area of marine resources mapping, soil reclamation, development of hybrid seeds, agriculture development, cross breeding, dry land agriculture/ horticulture collaboration among NGOs, research establishments would help greatly. Remote sensing data on sea resources, sea currents, information on flood, cyclones need to be made available to the local communities.
Streamlining and strengthening buyers and sellers markets is another challenging agenda. Fishermen need various kinds of nets based on their boat types and targeting fish varieties. Hence, the tie up between the industry and the fishermen cooperatives would help the needy to get nets in the reasonable prices. The orders can be placed through internet after the initial rapport among the producers and buyers.
Farmers can forge alliances with the fertilizer and pesticide wholesale agencies and the communities who depends livestock with feed companies.
4. ASSET BUILDING FOR REDUCING VULNERABILITY AND IMPACTING POVERTY
We propose two programs to build assets in the individual households and community levels namely cash for work program and food for work program. While cash for work program directly provide the financial resources to support the asset building, food for work program complements and helps individual households to divert other resources to invest on productive assets along with ensuring food security.
4.1 Individual Assets Individual assets can be shelter, lands, livestock, boats, nets, engines, production equipments etc. Cash for work program will help individual families to acquire these assets in a reasonable time. Shelter itself is a productive asset both directly and indirectly depending on the context. In the case of livestock based livelihoods shelter functions as a space of production.
4.2 Community Assets Tsunami devastated community assets like village tanks, farm ponds, drainage channels, transportation infrastructure, electricity networks, telecommunication systems, health and education infrastructure and networks. Public assets like schools, hospitals, roads, telecommunication and electricity networks have been resumed to some extent of normalcy in two weeks. However, ponds, tanks, drainage channels, roads and other such areas require renovation and reconstruction.
5. INTEGRATING CONSERVATION IN THE RESTORING LIVELIHOODS STRATEGY
5.1 Marine resources and vulnerability Mapping It is high time for the government to come out with the comprehensive programme to map the availability of the marine resources, types of species and endangered species in the West coast. It is also important to map the vulnerable areas in the coastal areas. The support of ISRO, Anna University, Ocean Management Institute and other scientific establishments can be sought for the purpose. Since the coastal areas of West Coast including the Gulf of Mannar area requires integrated conservation management, setting up a West Coast Conservation Management Authority can be explored. Mangroves, coral reefs and sea grass based eco systems can be protected and promoted in a comprehensive manner.
5.2 Estimating fish aggregates and establishing village information centers Availability of fish resources can be estimated comprehensively by dividing the West Coast of Tamil Nadu in to many zones. Based on the fish aggregates and the carrying capacity the government has to come out the optimum utilization system for sustaining and promoting sea resources. The crux of the problem is these kinds of information have to be shared with fishermen communities seamlessly and for that village information centers should be set up and the self regulation systems can be inbuilt among the village fishermen societies. This requires processing remote sensing data in the periodical intervals and sharing it in the manner understandable to the fishermen and coastal communities. Interface among the Anna University, Village information centers and the fishermen communities will help to make this process workable.
5.3 Conservation Measures Conservation of marine resources can be possible by both protecting the resources by optimum utilization so that depletion is close to zero in the medium term and promoting complementary conservation measures through promoting mangroves, preserving sea grass eco systems and coral reefs. Government with the support of environmental organizations has to identify the places conducive to the promotion of mangrove forests along the West Coast. Through resource mapping coral reef and sea grass eco systems can be identified and these ecologically fragile zones have to be preserved.
Scientists are saying that mangrove forests can ‘kill’ tsunami waves and protect the inland from cyclone winds and floods to some extent. Hence, it is the priority of the government and civil society to promote short, medium and long term conservation measures to promote eco friendly coastal villages.
5.4 Promoting Conservation Movement NGOs and coastal communities can build alliances to conserve and promote the marine resources. Village level fishermen federations, women savings and credit groups, village information centers and the scientific establishments can be effectively interfaced.
6. REBUILDING THE ECONOMY OF COASTAL VILLAGES
Local economy was completely destroyed in many villages and substantially collapsed in the remaining villages. Rebuilding the coastal economy in the tsunami affected villages require substantial investment and support from the government, NGOs and civil society. It can be revived through infusing capital towards addressing debts of the affected local communities and strengthening demand and supply systems.
6.1 Debt Relief program to Enhance Local Cash Flows Debt relief support should be provided to fishermen, farmers, SHGs, traders and other such communities affected at the villages. These groups might avail loans from commercial banks, fishermen cooperatives, primary agricultural cooperative banks, Micro Finance Institutions and money lenders. Government along with formal financial institutions should devise a relief package to compensate affected coastal communities.
It is not advisable to write off those debts since it may create a moral hazard among the local communities and the general civil society. Based on the purpose, economic status of the family and quantum of the loan amount individual based moratorium can be fixed and the repayment can be resumed after the moratorium period. Repaid amount can be used as common fund in case of SHGs and other community organizations, local infrastructure development fund in case of individual loans.
6.2 Strengthening Demand and Supply Streams Due to relief and compensation support for the loss of lives and productive assets, a few of the affected families had been compensated already and others over a period of time. It seems that it will take a few weeks to resume fishing and related activities. As for as agriculture is concerned it may take two to three seasons based on the level of the rainfall and the effectiveness of the soil reclamation and availability of irrigation infrastructure. Unless we strengthen the demand side by strengthening local production, effective supply may not take off depriving the needs of the affected communities further. Hence, restoring various sectoral livelihoods should be speedy. It requires the prerequisite of effective relief and rehabilitation delivery by the government and NGOs side, revamping and restoring production machinery in the local industry side. So, local communities have to be enabled to take up their traditional livelihoods.
7. FUTURE DIRECTION
Restoring the livelihoods is the challenging area to both government and the NGOs. The role of the government does not end by distribution of compensation alone to the affected communities. Though NGOs work in the rehabilitation sphere, top down method by purchasing boats and nets and delivering them to the affected families will not serve in sustaining the livelihoods of the affected families. Restoration of livelihoods will be addressed meaningfully only through community ownership of the rehabilitation program and adequately addressing all other issues related to it like technology intervention, establishing effective linkages among relevant organizations, conserving the marine resources and strengthening demand and supply streams.
|