Vulnerable populations

While the poor and the marginalised are the toughest hit, girls and kids are much more susceptible to climatic variations.

Kalaburagi-based economist Sangeetha Kattimani correlates local weather adjustments to the financial growth of north Karnataka, one of many state’s most backward areas. “Six of the eight Kalyana Karnataka districts have less than 1% of green cover and five of these districts are suffering from both floods and drought,” she says.

She factors out that ladies are the worst affected as a majority are employed as farm labourers and any antagonistic affect on crops attributable to floods or drought leads to lack of earnings.

The impacts on agriculture are seen in different states too.

Vishwanath Ok Ok, vice chairman of Karnataka Growers Federation, says the state has been witnessing the affect of adjusting climate patterns since 2016. The coffee-growing districts of Kodagu, Hassan and Chikkamagaluru witnessed two years of drought in 2016 and 2017, adopted by three years of heavy rains.

“Rain is not new to us in Western Ghats. However, intense spells of rain in a short period of time, which is a recent phenomenon, is damaging our crops. The natural drains are not equipped to handle such heavy rain, resulting in flooding,” he says.

The monsoon showers that used to set within the first week of June are actually setting within the final week of June or the primary week of July. Monsoon is withdrawing a month late. There are intermittent rains until November or December leading to a brief winter season when flowers must bloom. “The changing weather impacts the coffee cultivation in a big way,” Vishwanath says.

“Floods, cyclones, and heatwaves have intensified, affecting the food, water, and energy security, resulting in the loss of lives and livelihoods. Domestic migration is happening from agriculture-dominated areas of northern states that are facing rainfall deficits to the megacities like Mumbai that are facing increasing climate risks due to heavy rains, cyclones and a rising sea level,” says Roxy Mathew Koll, a local weather scientist on the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.

Coping methods

Farmers in Rajasthan have adopted modern farming strategies like “pitcher irrigation” to fight local weather change within the dry lands. They additionally assemble embankments, water harvesting constructions to seize rainwater and stop run-off and soil erosion, apart from selecting crops like pearl millet which might be extra suited to the local weather.