November 30, 2023December 1, 2023

Location: Jaipur Central Jail, Rajasthan, India

Duration: February 2022 – April 2023

Typology of the solution: Urban Farming

Scale of the Project: Neighborhood

About the project:

Under the Jaipur Greening Initiative, this project seeks to address issues of heat stress within Jaipur city through localised climate action. Although high temperatures and low precipitation are seen as part of the city’s natural semi-arid climate, the city has been witnessing extreme weather phenomenon such as heat waves, droughts, and floods over the last few decades. These challenges in the city can be primarily attributed to patterns of urbanization and climate change. The Jaipur Central Jail Campus intervention specifically seeks to address heat risk and provide an opportunity for inmates to engage in urban farming activities towards positive engagement during their stay, improved access to fresh produce and development of future livelihood skills.

Objectives:

Demonstrating NbS solutions towards localised climate action.

The project seeks to demonstrate the potential of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) through localised climate action. The project has implemented cost-effective, localised urban farming and greening interventions at the Jaipur Central Jail Campus, a proof-of-concept demonstrating the benefits and co-benefits of NbS and enhancing the stakeholder capacities towards implementing NbS.

Project Implementation and activities:

Project Activities :

Stage 1: City analysis and local-implementation partner identification (Feb 2022-Apr 2022)

A landscape analysis of the city was conducted to understand the major climate-associated challenges within the city, and identify the various local partners for implementation and stakeholders (including urban development departments, officials and institutions) for potential collaborations.

Stage 2: Community awareness building, beneficiary on-boarding and site identification

A convening of stakeholders across diverse organizations, institutions and government departments was held to introduce them to the project and capacitate them on NbS and its opportunities within the city. Interest from the Jaipur Central Jail authorities helped determine local risks and priorities, and the selection of a site and solutions for the pilot.

Stage 3: Designing, implementing and training

The jail authorities were actively engaged in the process of designing the farms, with a total of 12 prison inmates capacitated and engaged in implementation and maintenance.

Stage 4: Monitoring and Evaluation

To ensure environmental, social and economic benefits and co-benefits of the interventions were systematically measured, assessed and translated to the beneficiaries, the WRI India team determined KPI’s and built local partner capacities for data collection.

Stage 5: Capacity building workshops

A capacity building workshop was held at the Jaipur Central Jail Campus to demonstrate the benefits of urban farming for
 – Improved food security
 – Combating urban heat and air pollution
 – Creation of job opportunities through skill development
The workshop was received with immense enthusiasm by 150 participants and the jail administrative authorities expressed an interest in scaling such initiatives to other prison campuses within the state.

Current Status : Implementation complete and handed over to the authorities for maintenance

Implementing partners:

WRI India was the lead implementation partner and carried out the city analysis, engaged local stakeholders and applied a science-based approach in selecting sites and designing and implementing solutions.

The local implementation partner was Living Greens Organics Pvt. Ltd., an urban organic farming company based out of Jaipur that converts unused urban spaces (rooftops, plots, gardens, farmhouses etc) into organic food producing spaces. Their primary role was the implementation of the solutions on site, training the inmates towards the maintenance and monitoring of the interventions and measuring the different indicators established for the interventions.

The capacity-building session towards the end of the project was collaboratively designed and organized by WRI and The Living Greens.

Source of Finance CAPEX/OPEX:

The Caterpillar Foundation was the primary donor for the project. The funding covered the implementation and the maintenance of the project interventions until it was handed over to the jail authorities. The maintenance of the urban farm is currently being undertaken by the Central Jail authorities.

Challenges addressed:

  1. The initial project strategy relied on the active support of city development authorities, particularly in identifying areas for implementation and acquiring permissions for the same. However, our interactions with city officials across various departments was able to garner only limited interest and support towards the project. This required a reworked strategy of instead targeting local institutions and organizations who had shown interest in the project.
  2. Early interactions with the authorities and their suggestions to use non-natural materials (plastic mulching sheets for the intervention), indicated a limited understanding of NbS among the stakeholders. Discussions and capacity building sessions were required to improve awareness and highlight the benefits of opting for NbS.
  3. Security protocols at the site made acquiring permissions and identifying areas for intervention and the specific solutions a challenging task. Having a local implementation partner who had a well-established association with the prison authorities helped bring the necessary buy-in. Restricted public access at the site also made it difficult to bring in external support for maintenance and limited the visibility that the project sought to receive in the city. However, this became an opportunity for us to engage the inmates in the maintenance activities and has since been successful in garnering interest and visibility with different audiences.

Impacts:

The potential impacts of the project can be understood under the following parameters:

  • Environmental Impact :
    – The urban farming intervention has the potential of regulating soil moisture and quality. The rooftop farming interventions have the potential of regulating the roof temperature of the building.
  • Economical Impact :
    – The urban farming intervention in the prison campus has allowed the prison inmates and staff to become self-sufficient in their vegetable production, eliminating the need to buy them externally.
    – The inmates engaged in the urban farming intervention have been compensated per day for their services, supporting their economic security.
  • Social Impact :
    – The engagement and capacity development of the prison inmates in the urban farming intervention helped develop their skills towards employability in agriculture and green jobs.

Lessons Learnt:

  1. Partnerships with diverse institutions can serve as an entry point for NbS interventions in cities unfamiliar to the concept of NbS. These institutions can provide the necessary visibility and momentum essential for scaling and mainstreaming NbS within the city. Partnering with institutions such as The Jaipur Central Jail also allowed for the maintenance and long-term sustenance of the interventions.
  2. Engaging a local implementation partner such as The Living Greens, who understands the local context, climate and ecological systems was integral for the robust implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the interventions and in helping us identify the stakeholders and getting the necessary buy-in
  3. The area inside the jail campus was used for an urban farming intervention while the area outside the campus was developed as an urban forest. Selecting different solution typologies based on site areas can demonstrate NbS’s potential for building climate resilience to the stakeholders, thus building more buy-in.
  4. Involving local communities and stakeholders in the planning, design and implementation of the interventions is key to garnering support, developing stewardship and ensuring that the benefits of the interventions are well-received. Engaging the prison inmates in the development and maintenance of the intervention has reaped various social and economical co-benefits.
  5. Demonstrating the interventions and disseminating the learnings from the project to diverse stakeholders, such as city officials, institutions and local organizations, can serve as proof-of-concept for NbS and create further opportunities for adoption and subsequent scaling up of these solutions. This has helped conceptualize the replication and scaling of this intervention typology within diverse stakeholders.
  6. Planning and building contingencies (such as extra saplings, alternate implementation areas) during the project is essential to mitigate any damage that may occur within the interventions.

Scalability and replicability potential and conditions for success:

The following interventions indicated the potential for scalability and replicability:

The urban farming intervention in The Jaipur Central Jail Campus, successfully created a model for food and economic security for the prison inmates. Recognizing this potential, the Director General of Prisons expressed that they are seeking opportunities to replicate the intervention within other available areas of the prison and scaling this initiative across other prison campuses across the state. They are currently seeking additional funding and technical assistance for its implementation. The operationalisation and maintenance shall be the responsibility of the prison authorities.

Additional Information:

Social Media: We have used a consistent campaign on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn under #NatureBasedSolutions to promote and highlight ongoing work. Some examples from LINKEDIN are below –

Blog:

News:

Author:

Siddharth Thyagarajan
Senior Program Associate – Sustainable Cities & Transport, WRI India
Siddharth.thyagarajan@wri.org