65% of Indian population is rural and almost all of them are linked to agriculture, horticulture and pisciculture for their livelihoods. They are absolutely dependent on nature economy and affected disproportionately higher by climate change. They may not contribute large amount of GDP, but the the sheer volume of population in distress is alarming. States tend to think that there is no budget for climate adaptation and feel helpless too.
Here is a programme to overcome these problems and plan for a climate resilient rural economy. DamageControl as the communication partner for the programme worked on materials to reach officials who plan rural development. But more interestingly, it was important to document the process and communicate to the large stakeholders.
The first ground rule to manage climate change adaptation is to acknowledge that all departments of the state is responsible to invest in it. Once done, the absence of adaptation budget goes away, because all departments have budget and they need to take climate change into account. There is now robust science available to determine the climate trend in mid-century and end-of-the-century. The science helps to understand water vulnerability and socio-economic vulnerability for a particular district, or even a sub division. This calls for climate change knowledge to spread horizontally to all departments. at the same time, a climate resilient rural development is only possible when the knowledge travels vertically to the district officials and local governments. The programme tried to bridge that gap between research institutes, officials and policymakers to the last post of local governance.
The methodology looks like the following:
The programme worked with four state governments: Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.