Global warming has already affected the world’s climate, and changed the type, timing, duration and intensity of water precipitation, resulting in major and minor weather events. These events have been playing havoc with the agriculture-dependent livelihoods and food security of about 70 percent of the world’s poor. This is particularly true for arid and semi-arid areas in the global south.

The strategies adopted by vulnerable households in the face of these events, to help achieve water and food security, are not only influenced by their traditional knowledge and immediate environment, but also by opportunities available to them within the household and community. Successful efforts to confront climate change will require a wide diversity of strategies. It is important to create a conducive environment to strengthen approaches that already address climate change, food and water security simultaneously.

Yet, most current climate proposals largely focus on developing new technological interventions, without adequate attention to precautionary principles. Thus, there are increased investments towards developing new climate-ready seeds to deal with water scarcity; “soil carbon sequestration” through large-scale use of bio-char is proposed as a means for reducing the carbon levels, and soil-quality enhancement. However, these approaches are based on still-unproven claims and do not address their impact on our natural world, and may worsen the overall crisis. A case study on proven methods and practices by women in arid areas of India provides lessons for more immediate and sustainable alternatives.

This summary identifies three principles and a set of policy-level interventions necessary to enhance water and food security for marginal communities by drawing on the experiences of Tamilnadu Women’s Collective (WC), a federation of village-level women’s groups, from 1,500 villages, with a membership of over 150,000 spread over 16 districts in the state of Tamilnadu, India.1 The majority of the members belong to the Dalit community (the lowest in terms of socio-economic and caste hierarchy) and tend to be subsistence agriculturists or landless laborers.