Climate Change . . . What an association

We’ve been working quite hard in the area of bringing resilience in our surrounding communities towards climate change. The strategies have been manifold.

The major strategies being aimed towards equipping families to alternative livelihoods, facilitating the cultivation and acceptance of drought resistance crops like millets, group formation aimed at co-operative agro-based livelihoods and forest conservation.

It was surprising to read in the BBC about a study published in Science with research done at the University of California, Berkeley, which says that shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world.

This makes lots of sense to a place like Palamu where NJH is.

Palamu has been famous for the periods of irregular drought and unpredictable rainfall. Even as the rest of the nation celebrates a good monsoon, Palamu has been in the throes of an bad drought.

The study brings out the fact that it is all the more important that the government and civil society organisations think seriously about ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

And the key I believe is to look back at the way our forefathers have tackled changes in climate. Many a time, we have come to conclusions that forceful interventions in the name of development and modernisation has brought about more challenges than solutions in the long run.

A simple example is that of the Green Revolution which had been touted as the long standing solution to food insecurity. However, on looking back, we see that it caused many a damage to traditional dietary habits of communities. At least in the Palamu region, this holds true as communities which depended on millet crops which are drought resistant were forced into or enticed into water dependent crops of rice and wheat.

I’m sure we need to look more into this aspect of climate change, but one cannot take away the fact that people like me do not find it difficult to accept such a research.