The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is a poverty alleviation programme in India. As an employment guarantee scheme, it successfully captures information on the number of jobs and assets created. However, assessment of the multiple climate co-benefits arising from these assets has been a blind spot.
This report details the subnational efforts to quantify the climate adaptation and mitigation co-benefits of the programme, and develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for quantifying and reporting the climate co-benefits of MGNREGS works.
The study -- through the rapid assessment of the climate co-benefits from the Usharmukti programme -- puts forth a framework that can guide a state to quantify the adaptation, resilience and mitigation co-benefits arising from MGNREGS assets, thus highlighting at a national level the scheme’s potential to enhance rural resilience and accelerate India’s progress towards achieving its climate goals.