Islamabad: The World Bank has given its go ahead to the Indus Ecoregion Community Livelihood project, being developed by WWF-Pakistan in Sindh to improve the livelihoods of local communities.
The project will focus on four priority sites: Keenjhar Lake in Thatta district, Chotiari reservoir in Sanghar district; Nara Canal and surrounding communities in Khairpur district; and Manchar Lake and surrounding communities in Jamshoro district.
The Indus region is the most prioritised of the five ecoregions in Pakistan, and is one of the 40 most significant ecoregions in the world.
These areas have overlooked by most government departments, due to limited resources, despite their potential for generating considerable economic returns for rural communities and possibly to relevant government sector, a World Bank report points out.
Issues like weak infrastructure, inadequate investment and weak management of the fisheries sector will be addressed through establishing fisher sustainability schools and groups, provision of chilling and packaging units.
Livelihood development will be facilitated through provision of assets and capacity building trainings for alternate livelihood. These are entrepreneurial in nature and are limited to bakeries, milk chillers, indigo units and recycling units, which would improve the sector’s sustainability and productive potential.
The project aims at linking farmers with the markets to strengthen value chains, facilitate rural non-farm income and reduce risk, vulnerability and gender inequality.
The project activities, the first of their kind in the area, have been designed especially in Nara Canal and Manchar Lake.
