Soil erosion is a ‘round year crisis’ for the people living on the banks of sandy rivers in flood-prone areas, especially in Kurigram and Jamalpur districts in Bangladesh. During monsoon, it poses the threat of breaching water infrastructures, especially to the homesteads, roads, and embankments and which causes sudden floods. Vetiver, a deep-rooted grass, is one practical and probably powerful solution to soil erosion for many locations.
Ms. Lutfa Bewoa (65), a widower has been engaged with the initiative for the last two years as a project participant. Initially, her job, with other men and women, was to repair and maintain the earthen infrastructures as wage labor. She got to know about the advantage of vetiver from the project supervisor when she was engaged in planting the grass on the slope of the village road. She regularly poured water on the grass. Later, Lutfa established a vetiver nursery on her small piece of land at Kulkandi (Dakshin Moddopara) in Islampur Upazila. Local NGOs are contacting her to buy the vetiver within the fair price, while LGED contacted her to purchase those for their project also.
In reply to a question, Lutfa interpreted the advantages of the vetiver. She told, “to a casual observer it may seem implausible that a hedge of grass only one plant-wide could block the movement of soil under torrential tropical rainfall. It is a big, coarse, very tough bunch of grass and it grows to about 1 m wide at the base with a clustered mass of dense stems”.
The NRP DDM part has implemented a pilot called Disaster Risk Reduction Inclusive Safety Net Programme (DRRiSSN) in Chilmari Upazila and Islampur Upazila under Kurigram and Jamalpur districts. The project, with the engagement of the community and their institutions, introduced vetiver grass to protect homesteads, earthen roads, and embankments.
Due to her engagement in the propagation of the ‘sacred grass’, Lutfa is now known as ‘Vetiver Woman’! She sees the huge replication potential of the grass, for which she identified ‘lack of awareness as one of the greatest challenges. Now, Both private organizations and government agencies have established nurseries and are growing the grass in protecting against erosion in flood and landslide-prone areas as environment-friendly practices and regenerating nature.
