WONDER - Wool Opportunities with Decentralized Renewable Energy

Himalayan Wool Innovation Challenge 2024

2nd to 30th September, 2024

India has the third largest sheep population in the world, but the country’s wool requirements are largely met by imported wool. This has resulted in a sharp decline in wool procurement from shepherds and pastoral communities. UNDP, through one of its flagship initiatives, has worked extensively with local communities in the high Himalayas to incentivize wool production through capacity building, trainings, exposure workshops and developing a value chain around it.

With the lack of technological infrastructure, competing demands on people’s time, investments are needed to scale deep into the technology used for wool pre-processing at the village level. Still further, modularity and the reliability from energy generation at site, through distributed renewable energy systems, can be leveraged to power wool processing, potentially avoiding drudgery, increasing production, and improving net incomes. Supporting such applications can ensure democratic participation towards the national climate mitigation goals and more importantly, a just energy transition.

WONDER (Wool Processing Opportunities with Decentralized Renewable Energy) is an innovation challenge organized by UNDP India, aimed at developing wool pre-processing machinery powered by renewable energy. The challenge seeks to equip pastoral communities in the Indian Himalayas with machines for scouring, opening, and carding indigenous wool, installed directly at the village level. This initiative will strengthen decentralized wool processing in remote areas, enabling pastoral communities to secure sustainable livelihoods.