The continued devastation brought by drought to rural communities in the rainfed areas of Andhra Pradesh is alarming. The impacts of drought vary significantly at small geographic scales due to the natural variability in weather patterns, differences in soil types and water availability, access to resources, markets and social circumstances. The conventional state response to address the drought in the long-term is narrowly focused on water harvesting, irrigation and relief measures which fails to make substantive impact on the communities’ capacities to survive droughts. Therefore, drought needs to be looked at differently and in a broader perspective, beyond water, fodder and employment short-falls during drought periods.
 

Adaptation of rural society in drought stricken areas to prevailing drought conditions is a complex process. The purpose of drought adaptation is to arrive at a situation in which people are less vulnerable to the varying and extreme weather conditions and able to have a more reliable and steady flow of income and food security.
 

Drought Adaptation is a process of harmonizing the use of the natural resources with agricultural, livestock and other production systems combining this with a set of economic and institutional instruments so that maximum and sustainable livelihood gains can be obtained from the resources used, across surplus and deficit rainfall years. It also includes providing an economic and food ‘safety net’ to sustain people and their livelihood assets even when a well-adapted production system fails in the most extreme of external conditions.

With this perspective, an initiative to design a framework for, and to pilot, integrated community scale plans and approaches to drought adaptation building on complementing and consolidating existing development programs has evolved as the Andhra Pradesh Drought Adaptation Initiative (AP DAI).

Consortium Approach

• The Drought Adaptation pilot is rooted in the strength of the Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and is implemented by the federation of women SHGs (Mandal Mahila Samakhyas - MMSs) in convergence with various government departments.

• The pilot initiative relies on pooling existing experience and expertise of NGOs, research institutes and community based organizations into a consortium of supporting agencies led by WASSAN to facilitate the action research on the ground.

• The program is anchored by SERP and supported by the World Bank and Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Convergence: The project is also converging with programs like Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Program (APRPRP), Andhra Pradesh Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (APREGS), Comprehensive Land Development Program (CLDP), Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Project (APRLP), Andhra Pradesh Micro Irrigation Project (APMIP) among others. It is also drawing lessons for upscaling of successful initiatives with APRLP support in the project area on themes like Networked Backyard Poultry, Community Managed Fisheries, Livestock Health Services etc.

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