by Fazle Razik
Chars: River islands (sand islets) formed and reformed through silt depositions and erosions of rivers, located in the northern rivers of Padma, Jamuna and Teesta of Bangladesh.
Population: About a million people, mostly living on subsistence agriculture, farming and labour wage and around the bottom of the poverty line (daily earning ≤$1).
Geographic Fragilities: a. Disconnectivity, b. Land Erosion, c. Flash Flood, d. Extreme Weather
Economic Fragilities: a. High transaction costs (infrastructure), b. High rate of migration (infrastructure), c. Absence of forward and backward linkages for agro products (i. Absence of support services, ii. Absence of power sector), d. Vulnerable women working at home
M4C (Making Markets work for Chars) was designed to spur again the economic activeness of the people that have already benefitet from DFID’s Chars Livelihoods Programme phase 1 (CLP). Given the fragile contexts, the beneficiaries faced the big risk to slide into poverty again if they are not part of a systemic intervention that would link them to markets (backward, forward, support and financial) and facilitate more service provisions, infrastructure development and access to public services, technology transfer etc.
The project follows an M4P approach and applies diversified analyzing tools. Given the context of the chars, M4C applies systemic (M4P), fragility (DRR) as well as participatory approaches in its strategy. Facilitation being the main method to intervene and private sectors being the main partners and drivers of change, this project thrives to take more innovative business approaches to tackle fragility. The solutions designed for M4C have elements of systemic change that reduce vulnerability (disaster risks and socio-economic fragility) to prevent the project beneficiaries from falling back into poverty.
There are particular examples on special strategies adopted to reduce fragility:
1. Balance private sector profit interest vs. the need to overcome fragility: a) Promoting less commercial but more resistant “Miracle” seed of Maize; b) Promoting use of specific chilli variety that reduces effect of cold waves on chilli crop.
2. Collaborating with local/national government authorities to reallocate budget on infrastructure and transportation to improve the connectivity to the mainland.
3. Targeting special sectors focusing on char women vulnerability such as handicrafts and chilli.
4. Partnering with more local intermediaries and enterprises as it is supposed that they are better able to share the risks with the neighbouring char dwellers, compared to national players.
5. (Planned) Special mobile phone based financial transaction services to reduce money transaction risks and costs.
Learning from M4C and recommendations:
1. Adapt to a systemic approach with mixed tools for context analysis.
2. Design in complementing to other livelihood/asset transfer projects to maximize outcome.
3. Focus more on service delivery penetration than achieving outreach (Depth > Breadth). Fragility requires more demand stimulation for services: making producers’ groups, building capacity on coordination and making them ready to demand and receive services in bulk, etc.
4. Search opportunities to work with and complementarily to the local government.
5. Although not a fragile country overall, a country, at times, might have fragility in small pockets and micro contexts.
6. Gathering benchmark information and measuring impacts in fragile context are difficult tasks.
