July 21, 2023
By Vaishnavi Patil & Yashaswini Narayanappa
Project Coordinator & Technical Coordinator – Climate Change
The UK PACT team spent a week performing Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) assessments in Aracode. The GESI assessment aims to conduct a holistic analysis of how social, economic, and political factors impact women and other vulnerable or disadvantaged groups to tailor interventions and reduce discrimination. It serves as an opportunity to identify caste and gender dimensions, address issues related to financial inclusion, resource access, land rights, safety, and empowerment for women. It also helps the team recognise differing roles and responsibilities of men and women, such as their involvement in fishing, agriculture and marketing.
The team visited 15 hamlets within Aracode panchayat and recorded population, number of households and literacy rate as per the 2011 census, livelihoods practised, details of social infrastructure (such as number of schools, post offices, health centres and so on) and organised groups (for example, those that bring together youth or support for government schemes, etc.). A complete social profile was also done of the Irula and Kurumba communities that occupy this region to understand number of clans, their cultural nuances, places of worship, festivals, and so on. A study of natural resources and ways in which the communities interact and use these resources was done. Similar studies of accessible infrastructures (waste management, sanitation, fencing and so on) and financial capital was also done. Social structures were observed closely, from women’s self-help groups to other forums for interaction and support.
The power of decision-making is an important factor to understand – who takes calls on how natural and financial resources are used? In the case of the latter, it was found that women took the lead. In fact, most households in several hamlets were matriarchal in nature, with women being the breadwinners. Loans and mortgages were also mostly in women’s names.
Institutions like the Forest Rights Committees were also engaged in the assessment. Five FRCs fall under the Aracode panchayat, and mapping exercises were conducted for all of them.
The UK PACT team hopes that their extensive week-long study will help solidify and tailor their climate resilience activities for the Aracode landscape, to truly understand how people and landscapes interact, ecological processes and changes observed by them, what climate change impacts look like and how this affects every part of their wellbeing, from cultural to financial structures and interactions with the ecosystems, like non-timber forest produce extraction.
