The main goal of the project is to contribute to climate-resilient, gender-equitable, and socially-inclusive agrarian livelihoods in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan by supporting government efforts to promote solar irrigation.

This project aims to achieve three broad outcomes:

1. Generating improved empirical evidence to support the development of climate-resilient, gender-equitable, socially inclusive, and groundwater-responsive solar irrigation policies;
2. Validating innovative actions and approaches for promoting gender-equitable, socially inclusive, and groundwater-responsive solar irrigation; and
3. Increasing national and global knowledge and capacity for developing gender-equitable, socially inclusive, and groundwater-responsive solar irrigation policies and practices.

PARTNERSHIP INFORMATION:

Implementing (SIP) partner: Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL)

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Solar Irrigation for Agricultural Resilience in Bangladesh is part of the Solar Irrigation for Agricultural Resilience in South Asia (SoLAR-SA) project that aims to sustainably manage the invidious water-energy and climate inter-linkages in South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan) through the promotion of solar irrigation pumps (SIPs). The main goal of the project is to contribute to climate-resilient, gender and socially inclusive agrarian livelihoods in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan by supporting government efforts to promote solar irrigation. In the process, the project will also pave the way for sustainable and equitable groundwater governance by tackling some of the policy distortions such as perverse electricity subsidies which have created the current negative inter-linkages between water and energy sector in South Asia.

This project is being implemented in the southern and northern region of Bangladesh in partnership with government agencies who have the mandate to implement policies and programs on SIPs in their respective countries. So far, most of the solar irrigation pumps are financed through an autonomous government financial agency, IDCOL, and the rest through other agencies such as BADC, BREB, BMDA. The project seeks to grow partnership with all those agencies.

In doing so, IDCOL will be responsible mainly for the finance and implementation of the SIPs and coordination between beneficiaries and the research partners. NGO Forum is responsible as a research vendor to conduct studies agreed by the parties and contribute to the assessment of impact of the project, in all necessary means. Main responsibilities of NGO Forum therefore includes, arrange all required instruments and logistics for the studies, conducting surveys and providing datasets to IWMI scientists for analysis; secondary data collection and case studies; contribute to arrangement of national and international forums/ workshops; maintain liaison with the partners and donors; liaise with stakeholders and the beneficiaries.

NGO Forum partnered with IWMI to contribute to the Impact evaluation and impact assessment in general, are embedded in different activities which are part of two out of the three work packages. For logistical and financial reasons, different activities have been combined into a single impact assessment design.

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