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With a multitude of soil and conservation projects adopting sustainable livelihood approach to implement their project activities, monitoring should become an essential part of the project cycle to ensure the maximum effectiveness and efficiency of the project. Different projects can have different monitoring strategies. The current study starts by discussing about 3 different sustainable livelihood approaches of UNDP, DFID and CARE and their distinguishing features. Then the study explores a sustainable livelihoods project in the field of soil and water conservation being carried out in the Karauli district of Rajasthan and a detailed discussion is done on its objectives and interventions and how its monitoring is being carried out. The overall aim of the Karauli project is to establish community centred inclusive environment through adoption of conservation and management of land and water resources and smart agriculture practices. Its interventions include improving soil health, soil and conservation activities, pastureland development demonstration of efficient irrigation technology and de-risking agriculture through diversification. A results-based management is being applied for monitoring the project. This is primarily being done using a results-based management framework which was developed. The components of the results-based management framework have been discussed and analysed, and some missing components have been identified included the baseline indicators and targeted impacts. Furthermore, key observations and recommendations were made on the progress of the project activities and gaps and challenges were identified. Three major challenges found in the project implementation were acceptance of the project by the community, low participation of the community due to prior commitments and the undulating topography of the region. The planning-implementation gap has also been discussed briefly.
Keywords: Sustainable livelihood approach, Results-based management, Monitoring, Karauli, Soil and water conservation
