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MGNREGA and Biodiversity Conservation
The various activities being promoted under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme such as water harvesting and soil conservations could have high positive results on environment security and biodiversity and environment conservation. While this article appreciates the integration of biodiversity conservation into the MGNREGS, it points out the importance of preparing panchayat-level biodiversity registers, supporting individual and institutional efforts in biodiversity conservation and the formulation of appropriate policies.
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)1 was launched in 2005. It aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by legally guaranteeing at least 100 days of paid employment in every financial year to adult members of any household willing to do unskilled manual work related to public work. Covering all the 626 districts of the entire country, benefiting 41 million households, it is the largest social welfare programme anywhere in the world.
The scheme also seeks to create durable assets to augment land and water resources, improve rural connectivity and strengthen the livelihood resource base of the rural poor. MGNREGS works are largely focused on land and water resources, which include water harvesting and conservation, soil conservation and protection, irrigation provisioning and improvement, renovation of traditional waterbodies, land development and drought-proofing. These MGNREGS works have the potential to generate environmental benefits such as groundwater recharge, soil, water and biodiversity conservation, sustaining food production, halting land degradation and building resilience to current climate risks such as moisture stress, delayed rainfall, droughts, floods, etc (Tiwari et al 2011; MoRD 2012).
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