Establishing a Disaster Resilient Community with Improved Preparedness in District Ziarat, Balochistan

Centre for Peace and Development (CPD) Baluchistan as implementing partner of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is implementing a one-year project namely “Support for the Recovery of Agriculture based livelihoods of vulnerable farmers affected by 2012 flood of Sindh and Balochistan Provinces in Pakistan”. The objective of the project is ‘Restoring food Security and Agriculture based livelihood of 12800 resource poor, food insecure vulnerable farming households affected by recurring floods in Jaffarabad district of Balochistan province in Pakistan’.

Natural disasters are always being faced by Pakistan in almost all provinces in the form of severe drought, earth quake or heavy floods. Similarly, heavy monsoon rain resulted flood situation & affected the province of Balochistan & Sindh in 2012 & the same flood left thousands of families homeless & destroyed standing crops over thousands of acres. These families had no option but to migrate from their home town to other adjacent areas of the country. They had loosed everything like their houses, livestock, standing crops, agro infrastructure, water channels/courses with reservoirs means destruction of irrigation infrastructure. Thousands of acres of fertile lands become barren in the region after such flood situation & created a verse rural livelihood in the areas concerned.

Keeping in mind the afore said facts, Letter of Agreement (LOA) was developed & shared with CPD by FAO for implementation of the said project in the selected union Councils of District Jaffarabad-Balochistan. District Jaffarabad is comprises of three Tehsils namely Gandakha, Jut-put & Ustha Muhammad with number of union councils. But the selected UCs were focused under FAO project to address the vulnerable farmers’ communities of the selected UCs. The number of Villages in each Union Councils was stated as Band Manik (119), Rojhan Jamali (85), Noor Pur (94), Chalgri (102), Cattle Farm (121) & Nasirabad (13). The total number of vulnerable Farmers in 6 UCs were 17362.Under this project the Agriculture & livestock sectors were mainly supported by FAO by providing certain assistance like Provision of Wheat, Rice, Lentil & Sunflower seeds along with input supply e.g. Urea, Zinc Sulphate, NPK & DAP. Whereas vegetable kits were also provided to the farmers under such project. Similarly, Fruit & Fodder Trees were distributed among the farmers’ communities of the selected UCs of District Jaffarabad. 

The interventions done by Service Provider (CPD) were comprising of an integrated capacity building of the farmer’s communities in the selected UCs were very beneficial and fruitful for the respective farmers’ communities. These interventions created an enabling environment for the restoration and rehabilitation of the agriculture and livestock activities in the selected UCs of district Jaffarabad and the capacity building program was highly appreciated by the targeted and selected farmers of the concern UCs. Such sort of interventions not only boosted the rural economy of the poor & vulnerable farmers of the selected union councils but also gave a clear vision to the said farmers about innovative & result oriented agriculture interventions. These interventions could be more fruitful for changing farmers’ livelihood in the area concerned. As the area was severely hitted and affected by heavy flood. The same flood situation destroyed the traditional agriculture and livestock of the farmers of selected UCs. By the provision of high quality seeds, plants and other inputs diversified the agriculture and livestock towards innovative high yielding and productive interventions within the same sectors. Therefore, diversification towards innovative high yielding and productive agriculture/livestock interventions improved and boosted the rural economy of the vulnerable farmers. As a result, now the farmers of Project selected union councils are able to produce their own seedlings from innovative & high yielding seeds of rice through “Rice Seed Multiplication-RSM” in their fields. The farmers of selected UCs initiated an innovative technique during sowing of rice seeds under project life namely RSM (Rice Seed Multiplication). This event resulted availability of high yielding rice seedlings & now they are able to get maximum yield per unit area. Hence, these interventions are now continued on regular basis & sustained in the area concerned for the betterment of both agriculture & livestock sectors.