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Sand Dunes: A Threat to Lives Transformed into a Source of Livelihood, India

The 200 households of Kumharwala village earn their livelihood mainly from agriculture and livestock. The village, with a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims, is located in the Thar Desert in the district of Bikaner, Rajistan, India. The residents became increasingly alarmed by a large, expanding sand dune bordering their village. The sand dune, covering an area of 30 acres and 150 feet high, was spreading rapidly and approaching uncomfortably close to their homes.

As a result of a sustained and protective effort by the Village Forest Management Committee and Shanti Maitri Mission Santhan, the spreading of the sand dune was kept in check. Today, the area is green and flourishing with locally appropriate vegetation. Now the plantation is used for multiple purposes, such as growing fuel wood on a sustainable-use basis and as a grazing area for local livestock.

Villagers remembered that 15 years earlier, the same area was covered with shrubs and trees. As the population grew rapidly during the past 15 years, residents cut down the trees for firewood to cope with their home fueling needs in a region with limited resources. Eventually, cutting down the vegetation caused an imbalance in the natural environment. The denuding of the land combined with shifting and strong winds resulted in the desert to spread. The sand dunes began to expand at a menacing pace.

With the dunes spreading rapidly, the village was in danger of being covered under sand. Apart from the economic difficulties with reduced arable land that this threatening circumstance posed, the residents feared being displaced from their homes.

Villagers made several attempts to petition local forest officials about the threat from the sand dunes. However, their effort yielded no results. Then, Shanti Maitri Mission Santhan (SMMS), a partner organization of Aga Khan Foundation (India), intervened to help the people of Kumharwala Village. SMMS, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), is part of the Management of Environmental Resources by Communities program, jointly funded by Aga Khan Foundation Canada and the India-Canada Environment Facility.

In Surendranagar, India, men and women work together in a field to restore the cultivability of the land by planting babul tree seedlings.

SMMS suggested joint forest management and helped the villagers prepare proposals and plans to identify what they would do to deal with the crisis. SMMS also encouraged them to form a village-level committee to work through specific issues and problems, propose solutions, and plan how to stop the spreading sand dune. The villagers of Kumharwala formed a 15-member committee called the Village Forest Management Committee. The committee proposed the idea of stabilizing the sand dune with an asserted plantation approach.

The next monsoon season, the plantation work began. Villagers of Kumharwala contributed labor to plant trees and the Forestry Department provided Accasia totalis, a native desert tree species that consumes less water, is grown easily and not eaten by cattle. Various local species of grasses where also planted and continued to grow.

Once the planting was completed, the village committee framed rules to protect the plantation. Grazing was strictly prohibited in the plantation area with fines imposed if violated. The Village Forest Management Committee took turns patrolling the plantation to protect it.

As a result of a sustained and protective effort by the Village Forest Management Committee and SMMS, the spreading of the sand dune was kept in check. Today, the area is green and flourishing with locally appropriate vegetation. One can hardly recognize that it used to be a sand dune. Now the plantation is used for multiple purposes, such as growing fuel wood on a sustainable-use basis and as a grazing area for local livestock. The villagers realize that through a community effort, they can develop workable solutions that improve their lives. This concrete and tangible progress has empowered the residents to work together to solve other problems.

These efforts of bringing local and international partners together with Aga Khan Foundation to pool know-how and resources, coupled with identifying local needs, inputs and organization on a sustainable basis, made it possible for the villagers (who have limited resources) to improve their own circumstances and come up with the solutions that, for example in this case, avoided a bleak and critical situation for the entire community.

So the residents in the Village of Kumharwala remain in their homes, continue to figure out ways of protecting their environment, and are no longer threatened by the impeding disaster of being overtaken by the desert's spreading sand.