Building Capacities for Augmenting Livelihood to Sustain the Mangrove Stewardship of Women in the Indian Sundarbans to Adapt to Climate Change

Overview

The project, in partnership with Kolkata-based Nature Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS), aims to enhance livelihoods and strengthen the capacity of women in the Indian Sundarbans to sustain mangrove stewardship and adapt to climate change.

Effective management is needed to protect the mangroves of Sundarbans, which play a key role in climate adaptation and mitigation, and provide crucial ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and shoreline protection. Further empowering communities – which depend on nearby resources such as fish, wood, honey and other non-timber products – to become stewards of the ecosystem, along with strategies to enhance the market value of their products, can help reduce reliance on forest resources. To achieve this, the long-term goal is to build coastal resilience through nature-based solutions (NbS), essentially mangrove conservation and restoration in the context of Sundarbans by promoting mangrove stewardship, establishing governance standards for Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), and developing livelihood augmentation plans.

Objectives

Develop long-term strategies for sustainable resource management through natural farming and resource collection.
Develop Badabon Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) long-term vision and strategy for 2030
Strengthen market linkages and explore opportunities for value chain addition
Suggest strategies to expand market reach by selling commodities in the open market and other platforms
Identify areas for capacity building within the organisation and its members
Improve communication and branding strategy for Badabon Harvest with a focus on climate change adaptation, resilience, natural farming, and local Sundarbans production
Attract investments and funding to Badabon’s activities
Develop Operational Management Frameworks including group management plans outlining roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes for BFC

Events

Beyond Plantations: Synergies for Healthy Mangroves, Thriving Coastal Communities, and Robust Value Chains - Lessons from the Sundarban

Beyond Plantations: Synergies for Healthy Mangroves, Thriving Coastal Communities, and Robust Value Chains – Lessons from the Sundarban: Watch here

The session, as a part of Centre for Responsible Business (CRB’s) India and Sustainability Standards 2024, aimed to develop a strong narrative that promotes a comprehensive concept of mangrove stewardship at the national level, going beyond just increasing mangrove cover through plantations. Some of the objectives of the session were:

Emphasise the importance of nurturing and promoting mangrove stewardship among local communities to ensure long-term ecological sustainability beyond mangrove plantation.
Advocate for the mobilisation of resources through the right channels to support mangrove stewardship and related livelihood initiatives, with particular emphasis on women’s empowerment.
Initiate a multi-stakeholder dialogue platform on the transformative bottom-up model (pursued by NEWS) coalescing the triple objectives of healthy mangroves, thriving coastal communities and resilient value chains.
Use the platform to raise awareness about the positive outcomes nature based solutions using a value chain approach, involving all key stakeholders in the region.