Seed Festival 2018 at SLI

SLI is a unique venture by the Tamilnadu Rural Livelihood Mission in collaboration with Auroville Foundation. SLI has been trying to design and deliver sustainable livelihood programmes to rural community leaders and community institution members and officials dealing with livelihoods in Tamilnadu, since its inception in 2015. As part of its commitment to the conservation and transmission of traditional knowledge and sustainable farming, SLI organized a traditional seed festival in 2017. Due to the overwhelming response to the Seeds festival, SLI has decided to make this into an annual event and is organizing a seeds festival again on Saturday 28th of July 2018 at Bharat Nivas, Auroville between 9.30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Discussion on Sustainable Livelihoods

It is common knowledge that one of the most challenging tasks today is conceptualize, design and deliver sustainable livelihood programmes and projects particularly in the rural context. While the mandate on Sustainability has been set by the Paris Accord on Climate Change globally, the political indifference, the policy inclination and the popular discourse are all oriented towards further acceleration of climate change. Most schemes on livelihoods often end-up subsidizing status quo to minimise risk or achieve quick targets. The key factors that are opposed to sustainable initiatives today are –

conflict with existing market forces / organized commerce
inadequacy of existing established stake holder institutions to reconcile to the needs of climate change and adopting mitigation measures and
inability of the designers and planners to think and plan sustainability initiatives based on realistic timelines

In June 2018, three prominent institutions have come up with significant reports on rural livelihoods in the Indian context, viz., Niti Aayog, NABARD and the World Bank. While the NABARD report talks about the overall challenge of cropping pattern in the light of the irrigation scenario, the NITI Aayog has come up with a report on the levels of competence with which we are tackling acute irrigation challenges and the World Bank report talks about the consequences of inaction on climate change at this time projecting the scenario over extended timeline projection. All of these will have a bearing on the sustainability of rural (and urban) livelihoods in the coming years and their design, understanding, implementation and follow-up

It seems to be a good idea for stake holders and service providers in the rural livelihood sector to meet and discuss the recent reports of NITI Aayog, NABARD and World Bank on the side lines of the Seed Festival. Several scientists, farmer leaders, policy makers, civil society members and thought leaders in this sector are expected to participate in the Seed Festival and it provides for a moment to interact and engage on a policy relevant subject.

Registration:

This discussion is an invited event and there is no registration fee. The event will be co-organized with Centre for Social Innovation & Enterprise (CSIE), IITM. This event is by invitation and registration only. Do bring your own writing materials and pens please. You can register for the event by writing to director@tnavsli.in

Venue:

Bhavishyate Seminar Hall, Bharat Nivas, Auroville

Last year seed festival photos