Impacting Natural Resource Management at scale in Meghalaya

The Government of Meghalaya, with support from the World Bank designed a 60 million USD, Meghalaya Community-led Landscape Management Programme (MCLLMP) to strengthen the capacities of local communities to sustainably manage their natural resources. In 2019, Arghyam joined hands with the Government of Meghalaya to support the MCLLMP project, which paved way for the Natural Resource Management (NRM) Scale Program to build local capacities to prepare NRM plans for all villages of the state, with partners like Socion and Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) to make this vision a reality. 

Three Village Community Facilitators (VCFs) from each village across the state were to be trained and empowered with knowledge and capacities to manage their natural resources. It was mandated to select atleast one woman as a VCF in every village. In order to empower the communities to manage their natural resources, the capacity building process was designed with the VCF at the center. 

Some of the major factors that led MCLLMP to achieve its objectives are listed here:

• Atomised content: Capacity building sessions were designed to provide practical information along with context of how to protect and conserve natural resources. All the instructions were simplified and localized in their languages. Content pieces were made in bite-sized videos in local languages. 
• Digital tools designed for the first-mile: Technology is a great enabler in scaling community-led programs. We found two digital tools to be pivotal in enabling MCLLMP to keep the community at the center and scale successfully with speed:

i) Participatory Digital Attestation (PDA) app developed by Socion; and

ii) Composite Landscape Assessment and Restoration Tool (CLART) developed by FES. 

• PDA app performs 3 main functions:
  1. It empowers the VCF with attestations for each training, as a proof of the training received along with the training material. With access to information on their mobile devices, VCFs can refer and share them with the community freely.
  2. It generates trusted data and enables program governance for the state and district teams. When facts are easily made available, program managers can spend more time on solving problems rather than debating claims from the ground. It helped to build the confidence of the team to aspire to reach all the 6400+ villages in one year.
  3. It creates visibility of trained people, content and artefacts of the program.

• CLART app performs 2 critical roles in plan preparation: 

1. Demystifies science with a simple colour coded map and recommends a set of interventions for a location. VCFs can discuss with their community to decide the most suited intervention for their village. 
2. Remote vetting: When thousands of VCFs submit interventions, experts from the Soil and Water Conservation Department were able to review the submissions on the CLART portal to approve or reject along with feedback on corrective actions. Regular guidance by experts and remote vetting made scientific planning at scale and speed possible. 

• Periodic interactions: VCFs could interact with their peers and experts regularly over zoom calls to build their confidence in community-led scientific planning. 
• Transparency through open, trusted data: The NRM plan is a vision document of the village created by 3 people from the community with validation by experts and technology along with the participation and approval of the community. Making the NRM plans of all the villages visible online shows the commitment of the state to acknowledge the aspirations and needs of its people. 

The Government of Meghalaya, under the leadership of the Chief Minister - Shri Conrad Sangma, launched a Centre for Excellence (CoE) to enable convergence with data, knowledge and technology at scale. By hosting data on trained people, content and plans, CoE has removed barriers between institutions and communities and enabled programs to hire and share resources. 

In December 2021, the State cabinet approved a policy on setting up an institution called the Natural Resource Management Committee (NRMC) to plan and govern their resources locally to strengthen the local governance of natural resources.

More than 14,000 VCFs have been trained in 6000+ villages within 2 years. They are getting hired by other programs like FOCUS, MINR, etc. and paid incentives for the tasks performed. 

By creating 14,000 trained people as assets across the state, MCLLMP is proof that programs redesigned with community and first-mile at the center, supported with the right type of technology can generate trusted data and scale with speed: By creating 14,000 trained people as assets across the state, MCLLMP is proof that programs redesigned with community and first-mile at the center, supported with the right type of technology can generate trusted data and scale with speed with community participation and enabling them to manage their natural resources sustainably.

Watch how a village community facilitator - Shermald, is able to use technology and his newly acquired skills to support his community's water needs.