NAGALAND: MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PROJECT ON SPRING SHED DEVELOPMENT LAUNCHED

12 July 2018:

A Multi-stakeholder Project on Spring Shed Development for Water Security in 100 villages has been launched in Nagaland. The state depends on spring water to supply most of its drinking water for agricultural use. However, due to human activities springs have been drying up making water availability nil, especially during the winter months becomes a major concern.

A consortium comprising of the Government of Nagaland – Department of Rural Development and Department of Land Resources; Tata Trusts, Arghyam, Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), People’s Science Institute (PSI), and the North East Initiative Development Agency (NEIDA) & Eleutheros Christian Society (ECS) has agreed to work together under a three years project to provide water security by adopting scientific approach of spring shed management in 100 villages in rural Nagaland.

The consortium partners has agreed to converge its resources with the objective of providing an innovative model of Public Private Partnership where resources from Government’s existing programmes will be lever aged with non-governmental organizations like the Tata Trusts and Agrhyam providing support for software cost and NGOs like NEIDA and ECS extending support for coordination, community outreach and implementation. PSI and ACWADAM will be the technical support agencies for the project.

The overall goal of this project is to provide seasonal water security and conservation of springs with a technically sound spring revival initiative, build capacities at multiple levels of state institutions – village, district and state to undertake spring shed management and scale up the intervention across the state. Through spring shed management, the project also aims to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change affecting drinking water security in the state.

An Agreement of Association was signed between the partners in October 2017. The project was officially launched on July 11, 2018 during a programme organized by NEIDA at SIRD conference hall in Kohima. Nepuso Theluo, Secretary & Imlimeren Jamir, Director, Rural Department; Hoto Yeptho, Director, Land Resource Department and Officers from both the departments attended the programme; Debashish Sen, Director PSI, Sentimongla Kechuchar, NEIDA and Hongkin, ECS along with team members were present at the launching programme. Taking forward this partnership, the consortium partners have agreed to begin the work in 100 numbers of villages in the state over the next three years.