Bhubaneswar: The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) today organised a state-level consultation workshop on ‘Policy Coherence in Food, Land, and Water (FLW) Systems: A case study of Odisha’ at Bhubaneswar, as a part of the Food Land and Water (FLW) project supported by CGIAR Initiative on Strategies Initiatives (NPS).
The project aims to identify key state-level policies in the food, land, and water systems to improve coherence among these three crucial sectors.
As a part of this, four important state-level policies were identified – Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA), Odisha Millet Mission (OMM), Canal Lining and System Rehabilitation Programme (CLSRP), and Odisha Integrated Irrigation Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture (OIIPCRA). These ensure rural employment, sustainable watershed development, water use efficiency in the agriculture sector, and enhancing the potential of fisheries, and horticulture sectors. These policies also have the potential to jointly contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals on poverty reduction, creating livelihoods, and jobs in addition to ensuring water and food security.
Sharing reflections on the study, Dr Arabinda Kumar Padhee, Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha said, “The State Government has invested in an array of initiatives for raising farmer welfare on a sustained and sustainable basis. Food, Land, Water, and Energy-nexus system is to be integrated with suitable policy space that will strengthen and sustain agriculture production system as well as Climate Resilient with science and evidence based initiatives which the Department is harping upon. The Department is keen to collaborate with research institutes working on this front.
He also emphasized to reduce virtual water export and rational use of water for increasing production, besides ensuring the future water demand. Dr Padhee opined to integrate soil organic carbon and residual moisture to boost production as well as maintain soil health on long term. This Policy Coherence workshop will serve as a suitable platform to brainstorm and deliberate on various strategies that aims to bring agri-food transformation in the state to sustainably raise farmers’ incomes as well as the production portfolio of the State as Climate Resilient.
It also provided a great opportunity to discuss ways to measure the impacts of various steps taken by the government and other partners”.
The CEO of ORMAS Guha Poonam Tapas Kumar highlighted the Departmental initiative on Agri-produce marketing, value addition and creation of market which requires further r policy reforms. She also emphasised on ORMAS role in developing rural economy, economic empowerment of people below poverty line and marginalised folk by creating policy space for them.
The Director of Horticulture Rohit Kumar Lenka emphasised on policy convergence and channelization towards policy implementation. Different missions like Flower Mission, Jackfruit Mission, Mushroom Mission integrating with Mission Shakti, ORMAS, FPOs, other Stakeholder Departments, and Civil Society Organisation for better planning, coordination, and convergence to draw maximum dividend from the ongoing policies.
Introducing the study at the state consultation, Nitin Bassi, Senior Programme Lead at CEEW, stated “Food, land and water are intricately linked. To avoid any unintended impacts of interventions in one sector on another, the policy process needs integrated planning and implementation with a focus on the outcomes that can lead to income enhancement and sustainable livelihoods. Our analysis of the policies in food, land and water sectors and the initial recommendations suggest that the effort by Odisha government to build adaptation and make water and agricultural systems resilient to Climate Change can be a learning laboratory for other states in India and for many other emerging economies in the world.”
The three important steps identified to support positive impact are to document the best practices and lessons learned from the policies, enable outcome-based impact evaluation of the policies, and identify the need for capacity-building in a participatory manner with various stakeholders.
