Outmigration of men requires women to acquire new skills, capacities, and knowledge to deal with new challenges, including the impacts of extreme weather events. Through action research, it has been established that women-focused interventions aimed at raising awareness and the ability to process information, improving the ability to plan and budget, and supporting women to adopt low-cost and no-regret flood preparedness measures have the potential to enhance the adaptive capacity of their households.

The issue

Udayapur District is located in the Koshi River sub-basin of Nepal. The district experiences annual floods that destroy crops, kill livestock, displace people, damage infrastructure, and disrupt communication. The migrant workers from Udayapur District are generally male and employed in the urban centres within the country, as well as abroad. This outmigration of men exposes women to new tasks related to disaster preparedness, food security, and farm management, for which they are often unprepared. Women, earlier, would not have had the same opportunities to access information, participate in markets, access extension services, and partake in government programmes as men did. Outmigration of men therefore requires women to acquire new skills, capacities, and knowledge to deal with these new challenges.

The solution

Action research by ICIMOD and the Nepal Institute of Development Studies (NIDS) aimed at increasing women’s awareness and ability to process information about financial services, flood preparedness, and livelihood diversification, and accordingly, plan the utilization of the household resources. A women’s group was formed in each treatment village. Within the group, each individual household has the flexibility to set its own priorities and goals. The training events were organized in the following sequence: (1) financial literacy; (2) flood preparedness; and (3) livelihood diversification and business planning. Over 200 women from migrant-sending households participated in the training and village-level extension services.

Better management of household income is essential for target-based savings, a part of which can then be used to manage risks, including the impacts of extreme weather events. A three-day financial-literacy training was organized in each treatment village. This training included discussions on terminology, risk management, the importance of budgeting, financial goal-setting with targeted savings, and mapping of financial institutions and household financial resources. On completion of this training, each participant received a household budget book and coin box.

During the period between the financial-literacy and flood-preparedness training, group meetings were regularly held in each treatment village. These meetings provided an opportunity for the participants to share their experiences and revise different modules from the aforementioned training manual. During this period, the village coordinators also ensured that female participants who did not have a savings account opened one at the nearest government-registered cooperative. The monthly household visits by village coordinators provided another opportunity for the participants (and sometimes their family members) to communicate their feedback to the research team.

Since the participants were busy with paddy planting, the flood-preparedness training was imparted through a series of eight group meetings in each treatment village. Each meeting was around two hours long. Priority areas for household-level flood preparedness (e.g., drinking water, food, emergency go-bag, and snake bite) was identified in consultation with the participants. As part of the training, various solutions in the context of priority areas were explored. The participants were encouraged to include female hygiene products, special food items for pregnant women and babies, and to identify documents in the go-bag. The participants were also encouraged to identify short-, medium-, and long-term goals associated with the aforementioned priority areas. This training aimed to enhance a participant’s ability to process relevant information and plan accordingly. During the period between the flood-preparedness and livelihood-diversification training, group meetings were organized in each village once every three weeks. The household visits by village coordinators continued as before.

Through the training on climate-smart livelihood diversification, female participants were encouraged to grow short-duration crops that could be harvested in the pre-monsoon or post- monsoon season, which would help them manage flood risks. This training focused on the growing of short-duration vegetables (i.e., production practices, sorting, grading, and market linkages) and the preparation of bio-char (a fertilizer prepared using organic nutrients and biomass). Some households had also received training to develop a business plan (i.e., mapping of investment and expenditure; income mapping; discussion of risks and uncertainties; and understanding market demand). After the livelihood-diversification training, group meetings and household visits by village coordinators continued as before. A Junior Technical Assistant provided support to the participants to use bio-char to grow vegetables on a commercial scale.

Impact and uptake

The evaluation of this action research was done using an experimental study design (i.e., case- control and before-after). This was supplemented by household-level monthly monitoring data, which were used to track the progress of the interventions. Among the treatment households, an increase in the number of savings accounts, adoption of target-based savings as a means to address flood risks, and investment in safe drinking water and food storage were observed.

This action research has been replicated in Lakhimpur District, Assam, India (in collaboration with Institute of Integrated Resource Management (IIRM) and Swayam Sikshan Prayog (SSP)), and the Hunza and Nagar districts of Gilgit-Baltistan (in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund-Pakistan). Evidence from the action research in Gilgit-Baltistan helped to mainstream “migration as an adaptation” in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Climate Change Action Plan. All three action research studies taken together cover 700 women from migrant-sending households.

Contributor

Soumyadeep Banerjee, ICIMOD

Further reading/information

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. (2017, May 23). The Journey: From Disaster to Preparedness [Video file].

Banerjee, S., Bisht, S., & Mahapatra, B. (2017). Building adaptive capacity in Assam. Forced Migration Review.