Need for Community Empowerment and Climate Resilience in the Semi-arid Tropics

The vast semi-arid tropics (SAT) area covering 120 million ha in Asia is also the home for 852 million poor and 644 million food and nutrition insecure people. Growing water scarcity and increasing land degradation in the dryland SAT areas are further aggravated due to impacts of climate change. In order to transform the dryland areas, innovative integrated watershed management model was developed and piloted by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in partnership through consortium approach, convergence with the government programs, collective action, and cooperation (4Cs) approach. How resilience of the communities was built through integrated watershed approach encompassing the livelihoods is described fully. The outlines of different chapters indicate briefly the strategy and various aspects including the process adopted and its impacts are covered.