The four WORLP project districts are among the poorest in India. Past development in the area has focused more on physical asset creation than on addressing entitlement failures that entrap the poor. WORLP seeks to bring specific benefits to poor groups rather than confining itself to maximizing overall income in the area.
WORLP works through government and follows Government of India watershed guidelines but it provides extra resources for additional activities: capacity building, institutional development, minor-irrigation, drinking water, and livelihood initiatives for the poorest.
The "livelihood approach" is a tool to plan
and implement development. The approach seeks
to identify and build on people's strengths;
including their financial, physical, human,
social, natural and political assets. It starts
with people that need assistance. It focuses
on issues that cause poverty and helps to understand,
from people's perspective, how to improve the
way that they make a living. more...
The four WORLP project districts are among the poorest in India. Past development in the area has focused more on physical asset creation than on addressing entitlement failures that entrap the poor. WORLP seeks to bring specific benefits to poor groups rather than confining itself to maximizing overall income in the area.
WORLP works through government and follows Government of India watershed guidelines but it provides extra resources for additional activities: capacity building, institutional development, minor-irrigation, drinking water, and livelihood initiatives for the poorest.
The main end-users of WORLP are villagers in western Orissa. The project aims to improve their access to resources, information and professional help.
They should gain through social and technical development, leading to improved quality of life.
Participants in future projects and programmes within and beyond the project area will benefit from the innovation and experience gained under WORLP.
A watershed is a natural drainage area that extends from a ridge or watershed boundary to some point on a watercourse. All the surface water in the watershed will drain to this point. The area of a watershed is variable and may contain towns, villages, hills, fields, forests and so on.
A micro-watershed is an area of approximately 500 ha, draining at a common point that is used to implement watershed development projects in India. Priority is given to watersheds in the upper catchments with undulating terrain, large amounts of 'wasteland' and where poor communities live.
Watershed development projects are designed to harmonise the use of soil, water, forest, and pasture resources. The aim is to conserve these resources while raising agricultural production by conserving moisture in the ground and increasing irrigation through tank and aquifer-based water harvesting.
Conventional watershed projects do not usually address the neediest sections of the community. This is because the poorest do not have equitable access to the natural resource base that watershed projects work with. WORLP builds on the traditional watershed approach through providing significant additional resources focused specifically on the poorest.
Common Pool Resources (CPRs) are resources for which the rights of use are distributed among several owners. These co-owners are usually identified by their membership of some other group such as a village, a tribe or a particular community.
CPRs can be used and shared by many people. In law, CPRs may be owned by the government, the community or an individual.
Examples of CPRs are: forests, pasture lands, water bodies, wells, cultivable and uncultivable waste lands, dumping and threshing grounds.
PIAs are organizations asked by the local administration to manage watershed development projects in a number of micro-watersheds over a period of five years and according to Government of India guidelines.
PIAs may be government departments, Panchayati Raj Institutions, registered NGOs or other appropriate institutions.
PIAs manage watershed development projects through the appointment of a small, multi-disciplinary Watershed Development Team.
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