How to communicate climate change ‘impact and solutions’ to vulnerable population of Indian Sundarbans? From theory to practice

Abstract

Introduction: Global consciousness on climate change problems and adaptation revolves around the disparity of information sharing and communication gap between theoretical scientific knowledge at academic end and practical implications of these at the vulnerable populations' end. Coastal communities facing socio-economic stress, like densely populated Sundarbans, are the most affected part of the world, exposed to climate change problems and uncertainties. This article explores the successes of a socio-environmental project implemented at Indian Sundarbans targeted towards economic improvement and aims at communicating environmental conservation through organized community participation.Case description: Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and the wealth rank tool (WRT) were used to form a "group based organization" with 2100 vulnerable families to give them knowledge about capacity building, disaster management, resource conservation and sustainable agriculture practices. Training was conducted with the selected group members on resource conservation, institution building, alternative income generation activities (AIGA) like, Poultry, Small business, Tricycle van, Organic farming and disaster management in a participatory mode. The climate change 'problems-solutions' were communicated to this socio-economically marginalized and ostracized community through participatory educational theater (PET). Discussion and evaluation:WRT revealed that 45 % of the population was under economic stress. Out of 2100 beneficiaries' , 1015 beneficiaries' started organic farming, 133 beneficiaries' adopted poultry instead of resource exploitive livelihood and 71 beneficiaries' engaged themselves with small business, which was the success stories of this project. To mitigate disaster, 10-committees were formed and the endemic knowledge about climate change was recorded by participatory method validated through survey by structured questionnaire. As a part of this project 87 ha of naked deforested mudflat was reclaimed with endangered mangroves involving target community members aimed to sequester CO 2 , control soil erosion and act as a barrier during natural disasters. Conclusion:This case study concluded that participatory method of communication, aiming not only to communicate theoretical knowledge, but also to devise adaptation strategies through conservation of endemic knowledge, popularizing sustainability through Micro Finance Institutions and promoting AIGA along with motivating vulnerable community to restore degraded forest lands, could be a effective solution to practically combat climate change problems.

The effect of a natural disaster on handgrip strength in prepubertal Indian children exposed to a severe cyclone during the prenatal and early postnatal growth

“…The two experimental groups of children were recruited from two islands, Satjelia and Kumirmari. These were among the last inhabitable islands of Indian Sundarbans, communicable only by waterways, and also the most destroyed by Aila 49 . Data were collected from 22 primary schools in Satjelia Island and 13 schools in Kumirmari Island.…”

Dynamics of salinity intrusion in the surface and ground water of Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, India

“…Indian Sundarbans also supports a staggeringly high population of 4.6 million people and its mangrove forest renders multiple ecological 4th International Conference Marine Sciences (ICMS 2021) IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 944 (2021) 012061 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/944/1/012061 2 services such as being the largest blue carbon sink, remediating pollution as well as saving coasts from natural disasters [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

Impacts and synergies of weather index insurance and microcredit in rural areas: a systematic review

“…Most researchers use interviews (Coppock andDesta 2013, Kohli et al 2017) and focus group discussions (Gnauck et al 2013, Shee et al 2015 to collect qualitative data. Case studies (Moser et al 2015), document analysis (Moser et al 2015), and participatory approaches are also used (Chowdhury et al 2016) to analyze both WII and microcredit impacts. In terms of quantitative methods, the majority of the studies are based on surveys (Anderson et al 2002, Akotey and Adjasi 2016, Al-Shami et al 2017 and field experiments Yang 2009, Cole et al 2017).…”