The Climate Change Project

One interesting story I came have across is from a link added by Carolin , the one on the climate risk, vulnerability and adaptation at community level in Nepal. The story provides an insight into the negative impact of climate change on land race varieties and how communities are coping with this. Climate change has affected the people of Western Nepal whose livelihoods are dependent on regular rainfall and temperature for their agriculture. Climate risks include the changes in temperatures and rainfall. High rainfall intensity and droughts have become common phenomena thereby having severe effects on the crops and harvest. The irregularity and great variation in temperature has caused major disruption to rain fed agricultural systems and loss of biodiversity and local landraces. The local landraces are disappearing as a result of their failure to adapt to the climate change and also because farmers are now resorting to high yielding and modern varieties. Although this is the best way to get around it, modern yield demand excessive use of chemicals and pesticides thereby increasing both the economic as well as the environmental burden to marginalized farmers. An interdisciplinary approach was adopted by the Begnas village in Nepal, an area with a rich repository of 69 varieties of local rice landraces. Many of these landraces had characteristics that are suitable to cope with the adverse impacts of climate variability. Participatory plant breeding was introduced particularly because the farmers themselves knew which characteristics the landraces possess and which one could be improved on. The approach realizes the need to conserve landraces. Other local adaptation strategies at local level which help local small scale farmers to deal with the impacts of climate change include: - innovative farming techniques: e.g. onsite manuring, coping with water stress through drip irrigation, water sprinkling amongst others and the development of local level institutional arrangements: - e.g. mobilization of revolving funds for the poor, leasing of public school land to poor households, building capacity of local farmers A holistic approach provides a more thorough analysis of the problem and normally brings in a wider range of initiatives and concerted efforts. The full paper is available on line: http://www.utviklingsfondet.no/filestore/Nepalnet.pdf