effect of climate on life of economy of people living in arid land...........Please Answer! (-:
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Impact of climate change on arid regions in India
Centre for Education and Documentation
India is one of the most drought prone countries in the world. Over 75% of the cropped area is in the semi-arid tropics in the country (131 million out of 174 million ha). Ninety-nine districts in 14 states are declared as drought prone districts by the Central Water Commission (2002). Most of them are concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Rajasthan, affecting 265 million people in the rural areas.
Low and erratic rainfall coupled with extreme temperatures and intense solar radiation makes these regions the most vulnerable regions in India (1).
Water sources in the arid and semi-arid regions
Water is scarce in these regions. The groundwater tables and rainfall are low, and the water run-off is high. Annual rainfall is between 100 and 400 mm or 400 and 800 mm.
Migration
It would not be possible to talk of the arid and semi-arid regions without talking about migration. Keeping to the nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles of people in the region, migration in its many forms and patterns – seasonal/distress, rural-to-rural, rural-to-urban – is common. The earnings from migration play a vital role in providing sustenance for the poor, and migration becomes a strategy for survival and livelihood, sometimes the dominant one.
Migration happens to other irrigated areas where agricultural wage labour is available or to the urban areas where employment is available - in wage labour (building/construction sector, canal and dam work, road-laying cable-laying, etc.), self-employment by artisans and skilled workers (building construction activities as masons, statue makers, mechanics, drivers, etc.) and contract employment (watchmen, servants and petty-jobs in business establishments and offices, etc.) (3).
In a study conducted in Andhra Pradesh by Priya Deshinger, Overseas Development Institute (4), 66% of the migrants were from remote, dry regions and they could get 55% returns from migration. Twenty-four percent of migration was from semi-arid regions connected to cities and they got a return of 22%. Very little migration took place from regions which were irrigated (8-10%) with a return of less than 10%. The least migration was from regions which were close to cities. Migration has thus been necessary for communities in arid regions to survive.
Bio-diversity & food security
Climate variability has been, and continues to be, the principal source of fluctuations in food production, particularly in the semi-arid tropics. In conjunction with other physical, social and political-economic factors, climate variability contribute to vulnerability to economic loss, hunger, famine and dislocation.
Bio-diversity and food security are directly related. An inter-cropped, traditional variety of crop has much more chances of surviving a bad and erratic monsoon and allows the farmer to be secure in basic food needs. Crop diversification and intercropping systems are a means to reduce the risk of crop failure due to adverse weather events, crop pest or insect attacks.
Morduch (5) presents evidence that households whose consumption levels are close to subsistence devote a larger share of land to safer, traditional varieties of rice and castor than to riskier, high-yielding varieties and spatially diversify their plots to reduce the impact of weather shocks that vary by location.
However, the deep concern is the trends that are taking place. Seed banks of traditional, hardy crops are slowly disappearing and giving way to monocropping of cash crops like groundnut, sunflower, etc. And a failure of one monocropped, high-yielding hybrid crop, could destroy the farmer and push them into debt. This has been evident in the many farmer suicides in central India where recovery from crop failures has been impossible (see infra the case-study).
Conclusion
Development in the drylands depends on addressing degradation of the ecosystem, mainstreaming sustainable natural resources management and building upon the existing adaptive capacities of people and institutions. Actions tried in the past have not produced the expected results leading to international and national institutions choosing to invest in other ecosystems, considered better investments (the Indian ‘green revolution’ ignored dryland areas). Climate change will further challenge the livelihoods of those living in these sensitive ecosystems and may result in higher levels of resource scarcity.
It is thus necessary to ensure economic access to food, have contingency crop/fodder/drinking water plans, crop stabilization and watershed development programs, community based natural resource management practice, organic farming to increase land productivity, revitalization of traditional crops and practices to ensure food security, and revitalization of traditional breeds of livestock.