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Tribal, Dalit women bear brunt of climate change
(Source: IANS)
Published: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 at 14:51 IST
F Prev Next LNew Delhi: Marginalised groups, especially women, who are
heavily dependent on natural resources for their livelihood are
bearing the brunt of climate change that hardly affects those staying
in cities, it was evident at a public hearing organised here on
Wednesday.
Rural households, that are most affected by climate change, are also
learning to slowly adapt to the changes in their lifestyle and
agricultural practices, women and NGOs members said.
Civil society groups Oxfam India and Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (Dont break
your promise movement) have been organising public hearings across the
country - the last leg of which began in Delhi Wednesday - where
people from marginalised communities and rural areas come together to
speak about changes their lives have been seeing in recent times.
The first of the three-day hearing at the Constitution Club was
dedicated to a women's tribunal in which more than 200 rural women
from across the country came together to speak about the drastic
changes in their lives because of delayed monsoons, drought and other
effects of climate change.
Kamlawati Devi, 52, for instance said that a number of people from her
village near Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh have left the main livelihood
of agriculture because of poor harvest.
"The livelihood of around 80-85 percent people depend on agriculture
in my village. But because the seasons - the summer, monsoons and
winters - have lost their balance and their timings, the cultivation
has been badly affected. Thus most people have migrated from the
village in search of different jobs," Devi said.
Dalki Rawat of the Narmada valley similarly said: "The water table has
drastically come down and this has seriously impacted the yield of our
crops and forest produce".
While changes in the climatic pattern have affected the society in
large, women are the worst sufferers, Sandhya Venkateswaran of the
Wada Na Todo Abhiyan said.
"If a pond disappears, its the women who have to walk longer for
water. They are the ones looking for fire wood. Whatever be the
calamity it's the women who bear the brunt," Venkateswaran said.
Talking about the elevated impact of climate change on marginalised
communities, Venkateswaran said: "Climate change does not impact the
typical urban woman's livelihood as badly as those rural and
marginalised women whose lives are dependent on the forests,
agriculture and natural resources".
"Take an Adivasi woman for instance. Her life depends on the forests
and climate change affecting the flora will impact her household
economy immediately,
However, in the face of all these challenges, people are evolving new
techniques to adapt to the changes.
Devi said that in the face of drought, they have changed their
agricultural practices.
"We now sow corn, groundnut, arhar and other vegetables together so
that even if one or two crops get destroyed for heavy or no rainfall,
atleast the others survive. This is called mixed cultivation,
said.
Venkateswaran said the voices of the people and their recommendations
will be put together and submitted to the Environment Minister Jairam
Ramesh at the end of the three-day hearing.
"We want the government to put the people's voices into focus when
they discuss climate change at Copenhagen. As of now, even the
National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) doesn't focus on the
people's voices," she said.
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