Recorded presentation4B.6
Climate Change / Climate Variability, System Vulnerability and Planning for Adaptive Strategies
T.N. Balasubramanian, M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, TamilNadu, India; and A. A. Nambi
Climate change refers to a statistically variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). The impact would be greater in India because of her vast geographical area and high populations dependency on agriculture. The action to be taken by India at present is to identify the vulnerable regions to climate change and designing adaptive strategies. Vulnerability of a region can be drafted by questioning why, what, when, where and how. Geographical position of a region, faulty land-use practices adopted, high population density, wrong policy and administration of local government, lesser forest cover than the threshold level required, nature of aridity and semi aridness in terms of climate, presence or absence of water bodies, exploitation scales of natural resources, existence of severe poverty and uncertainty in livelihood, unemployment and under employment, existence of degraded ecosystem, and lack of social responsibility are some of the answers for the questions now raised. With the funds from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Switzerland, one project entitled Vulnerability Assessment and Enhancing the Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in Semi arid areas of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan in India is being operated by MSSRF, Chennai, India, from January, 2005 by involving Action for Food Production (AFPRO) and National Institute for Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE) as partners with back stopping from INFRAS and Intercooperation (IC). Two districts viz MehabubNagar district in Andhra Pradesh and Udaipur district in Rajasthan State have been selected for the study and with in each district two villages were selected by following purposeful sampling procedure. The climate data on rainfall and temperatures collected from India Meteorological Department (IMD) for the latest 30 years were analysed and the result indicated variability rather than change. One statistical index to assess the vulnerability of the study area was developed by the team and used for assessing the vulnerability to climate change. Based on the magnitude of the vulnerability result, the best practices collected from the indigenous knowledge bank of farmers were intermixed with scientific technologies and being tested for three anticipated weather codes (normal, deficit and excess rain fall situations) at village level. Recorded presentation
Session 4B, Impacts of Climate Changes (continued)
Monday, 21 January 2008, 4:00 PM-5:30 PM, 217-218
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