SEED Himalaya aims to support remote communities in the Indian Himalayas in their transformation into environmentally resilient and economically empowered communities. This is to be achieved through community-based, decentralized energy supply as well as local value creation in agriculture. The inclusive bottom-up Community Development Plan, covering both green infrastructure as well as socioeconomic structures, is tailored to the local resources, capacities, and needs. This ensures the sustainability of the project and enables the replication of its approach in other Himalayan communities.
Firstly, all 140 households of Jabri in Jammu and Kashmir have been equipped with PV modules and battery storage for basic power supply. The second project phase couldn’t be executed as originally planned in Jabri due to its limited accessibility caused by its location next to the Line-of-control.
Therefore, the community Simalta in Uttarakhand has been selected for the second phase and a Community Development Plan has been created jointly with the community members based on their needs for reliable electricity supply, improved water supply in agriculture, value addition in agriculture, and clean drinking water supply. In the final project year, this plan will be implemented jointly with a democratically elected Village Development Committee, who will manage and operate the newly installed infrastructure for electricity and water supply, as well as with a women Self-Help Group, who will launch, manage and operate a micro-enterprise processing agricultural goods aimed for high-priced markets.
This project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK, 2022-2025) under the International Climate Initiative Programme (IKI).