Objective

The project was taken up in collaboration with State Planning Commission of Madhya Pradesh and was meant to integrate biodiversity and local environmental services concerns in Seoni district plan 2010-11.

Achievements

The project has been successful in creating datasets in spatial domain, using layers like forest cover, biodiversity richness, percentage of BPL (below poverty line) households, and percentage of tribal households. The project has helped prioritize five clusters or sub landscapes, within the district, that show rich forest cover and biodiversity, high percentage of BPL and tribal population. The clusters include 294 (red category) villages.

In the district plan 2010-11, eight sectors namely agriculture, forest, rural development, fisheries, horticulture, animal husbandry, public health engineering and education have spelt out their strategies / actions that are likely to have positive impact on the biodiversity and environmental services, more so in the identified sub-landscapes. The project has, similarly, helped a group of village Panchayats to put up Panchayat plan showing integration of biodiversity and environmental services. A manual is also being developed.

Concluding Remarks

Being the first of its kind to facilitate mainstreaming of biodiversity and environment service concerns in district and local bodies planning, the State Planning Commission has decided to use learning from the project in the decentralized planning guidelines being developed by the State Planning Commission. The State Planning Commission is also contemplating to upscale the project in three more districts within the state.