• Address: 14-A, Vishnu Digamber Marg, Rouse Avenue Lane, New Delhi -110002

SPWD

Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development

2018

Member since

1

Platforms

Working towards these commitments

Ensure equitable land distribution and public investment that supports small-scale farming systems, including through redistributive agrarian reforms that counter excessive land concentration, provide for secure and equitable use and control of land, and allocate appropriate land to landless rural producers and urban residents, whilst supporting smallholders as investors and producers, such as through cooperative and partnership business models.
2

Strong Small-Scale Farming Systems

Enable the role of local land users in territorial and ecosystem management, recognizing that sustainable development and the stewardship of ecosystems are best achieved through participatory decision-making and management at the territorial-level, empowering local land users and their communities with the authority, means and incentives to carry out this responsibility.
6

Locally-managed ecosystems

Ensure that processes of decision-making over land are inclusive, so that policies, laws, procedures and decisions concerning land adequately reflect the rights, needs and aspirations of individuals and communities who will be affected by them. This requires the empowerment of those who otherwise would face limitations in representing their interests, particularly through support to land users' and other civil society organizations that are best able to inform, mobilize and legitimately represent marginalized land users, and their participation in multi-stakeholder platforms for policy dialogue.
7

Inclusive decision-making

Mission

SPWD’s mission is “to prevent arrest and reverse degradation of life support systems, particularly land and water, so as to expand livelihood opportunities in a sustainable and equitable manner through people’s participation”.

Objectives

SPWD’s focus is on obtaining knowledge from the grassroots level and influencing the larger systems, policies and programmess of the government as well as other concerned agencies. In the beginning, SPWD’s efforts were concentrated on initiating new field projects; commissioning of selective research studies through universities; and raising social awareness on the existence of wastelands and the opportunities available for their rapid restoration. The foremost challenge was defining what constitutes wastelands, the study ‘Estimate of wastelands in India’ being the first step in developing a terminology that broadly identifies, classifies and locates the different types of wastelands. This helped to prioritize problem areas and to develop programs that are appropriate to the different locations and problem types.

Constituencies

The Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD) is a national NGO that has been playing a catalytic role in reversing the process of degradation of land and other related natural resources in partnership with grassroots NGOs and community institutions. SPWD has worked in collaborative projects with over a hundred local voluntary agencies, across 17 States in 11 agro-climatic zones of India mainly through socio-technical interventions.

  • Address: 14-A, Vishnu Digamber Marg, Rouse Avenue Lane, New Delhi -110002