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Project in the Maldives

Building Resilience to Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives (UNISDR/ADRRN Project "Selamat")

Strengthening Resilience through Home Gardening in Maldives


Home gardens are crucial to brining resilience in vulnerable regions apart from meeting island nutritional security. Experiences from south Asian countries clearly show that eco agriculture approaches, agronomic and livelihood diversity and community networks were found to strengthen the capacity of the households to withstand and recover from disaster (Melissa Harvey, 2007). In Maldives, on average home gardens occupies 100 m2 to 500 m2 area adjacent to home. Apart from this, it ensures ecological biodiversity and more numbers of economically important plant species provide income to the household. The major crops cultivated are vegetables like chillies, beans, eggplant, few greens, maize, cucumbers, water melon etc, tubers like tapioca, taro, spices, other trees like curry leaf, drumstick, coconut, arecanut, and a few fruit trees like banana, papaya, bread fruit, Munitingia calabura (jeymu), guava, mango etc. Survey studies indicate that a home garden has around ten to twelve different species with different varieties of the same. It is essential to produce plant based vitamin and fibre from fruits and vegetables to supplement rice and fish based diet.

Resource status

Seed sources: Most of the cultivated varieties as well as species are high yielding ones introduced from neighboring countries. But attempt could be taken to explore to find out the availability of locally adopted varieties.

Soil health: The major issue is very poor fertility and health of the soils. Predominantly it is derived by the weathering of the calcareous coral formations from the bedrock has sandy texture with very low organic matter and shallow depth. Thus the soil structure has low water and nutrient holding capacity. In addition, the high porosity of limestone or dolomite origin primary aggregates leads to more evaporation and soil erosion. Much of the manures and fertilizers are imported.

Pest and diseases: Apart from damage due to pests and diseases, vertebrate pests like rats and bats cause considerable crop loss. Though indigenous control methods are in practice, it is important to improve it through blending scientific inputs.

Institutions: Community based institutions as well as youth and women groups are functioning well which are institutionalized through formal government structures. Local agricultural research station is the only technical support providers apart from NGOs working in the region. In reality it supports nothing or very little to communities living in different isolated islands.

Approach and Framework: The FAO Resilience Analytical Framework could be adopted which recommends four principles to improve resilience such as strengthening diversity; rebuilding local institutions and support networks; reinforcing local knowledge; and building on farmers' ability to adapt and reorganize. The approach covers both technical and social issues to bring sustainability. Using this framework as an overall guiding principle, attempt is initiated to develop a plan to promote and strengthen the homestead garden ins a particular island to bring resilience. A modest attempt would be made to develop a replicable model during the project period. Participatory multi-stakeholder approach would be adopted to implement the following activities.

The proposed activities, time taken to each of the activity as well as an estimated budget is to cover around 250 households. Apart from, strengthening traditional home gardens, efforts would be continued to study and experiment hydroponics through demystification of technology as well as process at decentralized manner. Based on the results and feasibility efforts would be taken to upscale it to the other islands in the atoll with support of atoll office.



Sub-projects
There are 4 components for the Selamat project in the Maldives other than Disaster Risk Reduction planning and training



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