Hyderabad: To improve the capacity of the rural poor engaged in farm-based livelihoods in order to cope with climate change in the State, an initiative was launched by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) in Hyderabad yesterday.
The NIRDPR said in a release that it seeks to establish a large-scale ‘proof of concept’ on integrating community-based climate change planning and adaptation by working with climate-smart Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and National Resource Persons (NRPs).
During the first Training Programme for CRPs that was held yesterday, W R Reddy, Director-General, NIRDPR, released the training manual for the ‘Sustainable Livelihoods and Adaptation to Climate Change (SLACC) Certificate Course. The course is supported by World Bank.
The course is aimed at training a cadre of Climate Smart Community Resource Persons and strengthening their skill sets. The resource person’s are expected to disseminate the practice of sustainable livelihood through adaptation to climate change.
The programme is being implemented in 638 villages in Mandla and Sheopur districts of Madhya Pradesh, and Gaya and Madhubani districts of Bihar under National Rural Livelihood Mission. All these districts are either drought-prone or flood-prone.
The release further added that the project would be scaled up nationwide. A cadre of over 200 certified climate-smart Community Resource Persons and over 100 Young Professionals in villages, who will combat the impact of climate change and secure their livelihood through climate proof planning and adaptations will be recruited.
The cadre will further disseminate the climate resilient technologies to the farming communities in their respective allocated villages, as assigned by the State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) staff, it said.
The participants after the course ends will be able to train or advocate other farmers or community in the villages on the climate resilient interventions using tool kits.