A Story of Resilience: Women and Climate-smart Agriculture

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We are getting homegrown vegetables and getting an additional income too. I never thought before to earn and save 3500 rupees every month!

– Rubina

Abeneficiary of the Lodhran Pilot Project (LPP), Rubina was selected by the Village Disaster Management Committee to receive training on climate-smart agriculture tools and techniques under its Building Disaster Resilience in Pakistan project.

Women experience a low income and constantly struggle to make ends meet in Jhang, a district in Pakistan’s Punjab province. After the LPP’s intervention, Rubina can now see a future full of possibilities!

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a component of the LPP’s project, which was a much-needed intervention for the rural community in Jhang district. The initiative was implemented from December 2018 to October 2020.

The CSA component sought to enable local farmers to learn and embrace climate-smart techniques to improve community disaster preparedness in seven of the most flood-prone union councils. The project enhanced farmers’ economic empowerment and helped communities benefit from higher agricultural yields in the long run.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index, Pakistan is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Punjab province, in particular, faces the dichotomy of severe droughts and extreme floods. These extremities undermine farm yields which eventually threaten household food security in the province.

Women generally own less livestock than their male counterparts and also contract for less pay. These differential constraints and insufficiency of resources can make women more vulnerable to climate shocks than men.

Therefore, empowering women such as Rubina with climate-smart tools to help women pilot CSA strategies is an important initiative.

Sakina Mai, another beneficiary of the LPP’s project from Dossa colony, recalls that sessions were held for women, who showed keen interest in kitchen gardening. She says that the LPP not only distributed seed packets and a tool kit for practical work, but also guided beneficiaries through the process at every step.

They held fortnightly sessions for all farmers where Sakina was a regular attendee. Soon after implementing the new techniques that she had learned; she noticed an increase in her vegetable yields. She decided to sell this extra produce to support her family.

This extra income was a blessing during lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic when my husband was unable to find any work.

– Sakina

Women like Rubina and Sakina belong to some of the most marginalized families in the region. Living in poverty, foreseen disasters like floods greatly affect their livelihoods each year, while unprecedented disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic only increased their hardships.

Initiatives like Building Disaster Resilience in Pakistan project by the LPP targeted these communities to lift them out of poverty and give them the confidence needed to help contribute to their families’ incomes.

The LPP has benefited 1,284 people, out of which 538 are female, 50 elderly and 8 disabled. The project has not only helped in building disaster resilience and emergency preparedness, but also left the villages with a solid foundation to build on their agricultural techniques.

These techniques allow both women and men to actively lend their capacities to food and income security.

I have learnt that fostering economic independence is essential to empowering women. Not only women feel recognised but also independent within a household.

– Sakina

I share my learning with other women of my village and motivate them to adopt CSA techniques and kitchen gardening. I am glad this earning is fulfilling basic needs of my family.

– Rubina

As demonstrated by the examples of Sakina and Rubina, climate-smart agriculture can be the future of gearing towards climate resilience for women farmers.

LPP is a non-profit organization that implements different projects and programs in seven districts of Pakistan. The Climate-Smart Agriculture intervention was an important component of its project Building Disaster Resilience in Pakistan supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) of the Government of UK (formerly known as DFID) through Concern Worldwide.

The writer is Project Coordinator at ADPC in Pakistan

Email: sana.zulfiqar@adpc.net