Using a Floating Mothership to combat flooding in India

The situation

Smallholder farmers in Bihar have been severely affected by flooding in recent years due to climate change. There have always been regular floods there, but the volume of water and the intensity of the floods have increased dramatically due to climate change. The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting faster, which increases the amount of water in the Ganges. At the same time, the monsoon rains are becoming more intense and unpredictable. It is almost impossible for people to live in the affected areas and maintain their traditional way of life, which they have cultivated for generations. The consequences are rural exodus and the associated impoverishment of people in the precarious conditions of the cities. The “Floating Mothership” project offers direct help and actions for the people coping with the changed conditions and this way prevent rural exodus to the cities.

The project

Our project partner in India comes from the Bihar region and has been working with the people there for a long time. This gave rise to the idea of offering solution-oriented help for the local people to deal with the severe flooding. In recent years, the prototype of a floating living platform, the Floating House, has therefore been built. This enables people to withstand the climate-related flooding and gives them the opportunity to stay in their homes in the long term. The Floating House prototype has been completed and has already been successfully tested. Built from simple, locally available materials, the floating house even has a negative CO2 footprint. The Floating House contains low-tech applications such as a composting toilet and vertical gardening and is therefore specifically geared towards the needs and resources of small farmers in the region. 

In the current project phase, a training ship is now to be built based on the prototype - the “Floating Mothership”. This training ship will impart knowledge on the construction of floating living platforms and other low-tech applications in the communities. The aim is to enable people in Bihar to build these floating houses themselves and thus prepare themselves against the floods. After the Floating Mothership has been built, the project partners of the centre of resilience will travel by boat to the small farmers and impart the knowledge for building these floating platforms on site. In addition, the Floating Mothership will also be used during the floods to support the affected people with food, medicine and hygiene support.

We are implementing this project together with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. If we reach the donation target of €8,000, we will receive project funding of €24,000 from the BMZ. So your donation has a 3-fold effect.