The northern Indian regions of Kashmir and Ladakh are home to a variety of livestock that provides meat as well as fine wool used to produce the famous Pashmina shawls. But overgrazing, strong winds and car traffic are now destroying pastures and posing a hazard to the survival of traditional herding.
More at: http://www.scidev.net/global/livestock/multimedia/the-land-of-vanishing-pastures.html
TOKYO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – It is often said that people in the poorest countries suffer most from climate hazards and the effects of a warming world. Now we have the data to prove it.
Between January 1980 and July 2013, climate-related disasters caused 2.52 million deaths around the globe. Of the total, a disproportionately high number of deaths – 1.28 million or 51 percent – were recorded in the world’s 49 least developed countries (LDCs), according to a recent briefing paper from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). – http://www.trust.org/item/20131206094547-fy6ma/?source=hptop
Syful Islam
The impacts of climate change are mounting hardship of Bangladesh’s coastal people where calamities like cyclones, tidal surge, and river bank erosion nowadays hitting in increased number.
People living in these coastal areas are considered as the most vulnerable to the climate change impacts. Most of the people living there are poor and some are at the extreme poor segment.
Two major cyclones — Sidr and Aila — which hit Bangladesh coasts in 2007 and in 2009, had destroyed roads and embankments, washed away homes, lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people. These extreme weather events which are considered as impacts of climate change have deepened the misery of coastal inhabitants.
Experts said agony of poor coastal people turned manifold as they are mainly dependent on natural resources for living and livelihoods. The calamities, when hit them, first damage the natural resources further weakening their strength.
With the impacts of climate change starting to be more visible day by day, scientists apprehend that a big portion of coastal areas of low-lying nations will be inundated because of sea level rise.
They said in Bangladesh a 10cm rise in sea level could inundate 2.0 per cent of arable lands by 2020 and 10 per cent lands by 2050 which may cause displacement of 15 million coastal residents.
Non-government organisations working in coastal districts estimate that nearly 5.0 million people living there are at high risk of either being displaced or experiencing extreme impacts of climate change in the near future.
Sea level rise
Sea level rise is a major concern for low lying nations including Bangladesh. Scientists blame manmade hazards for global warming which melts ice in the Himalayan and Antarctic. The incased volume of ice melting causes sea level rise which poses threat to existence of countries like Maldives and inundation of a big portion of Bangladesh territory.
The 2007 report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a one-meter rise in sea levels may swamp 17 percent of Bangladeshi low lying areas and displace 20 million people by 2050.
A new scientific report released by the World Bank Group in June 2013 said among the South Asian nations Bangladesh will be most affected by an expected 2° Celsius temperature rise in the next decades. It said if temperature is up by 2.5 ° Celsius the flood areas in Bangladesh could increase by as much as 29 per cent.
The IPCC in its Fifth Assessment Report (released on September 27, 2013) projected that by 2100 the sea-level may rise by 28-98 cm, which is 50 per cent higher than the old projections of 18-59 cm when comparing the same emission level and time periods.
Livelihoods under severe threat
Hit by an increased number of disastrous events the lives and livelihoods of coastal people are under severe threat apart from loss of homes and lands. Especially, as saline water enters into the lands and ponds during cyclone and tidal surges, the lands lose their capacity to produce crops while sources of drinking water become polluted.
Due to excessive salinity in the lands, the farmers lose crops frequently which further weaken them financially alongside threatening food security. In most of the coastal districts farmers can produce rice once a year. When a farmer loses a crop once a year, he has no option but to strive with family members.
The other way of earning bread and butter for coastal people is fishing in the rivers and sea. But the increased numbers of cyclones and storms have strongly affected the profession as staying in the sea become highly risky for life while fishes are becoming unavailable day by day.
A study carried out by Campaign for Sustainable Rural Development (CSRL) found that in last 30 years the intensity and frequency of storms had increased by three times. During the 2007-2010 period Bangladesh has had 10 to 14 storms severe enough for a Signal No 3 warning.
Thirty years ago, just four or five such warnings were issued each year. This year the meteorological department also issued Signal No 3 warning for Bangladeshi river and sea ports in an increased number meaning that higher numbers of storms have formed this year compared to last year.
And when a Signal No 3 warning is issued, fishing trawlers in the sea are advised to return to the shore immediately meaning a loss of several thousands of taka in each trip.
Besides, the fishermen nowadays frequently talk about getting fewer numbers of fishes both in the sea and rivers. Many fishermen families starve both in off and peak seasons due to meagre earnings.
Lack of work triggers massive migration
The impacts of climate change are causing displacement of thousands of people from the coastal areas. The 1998 floods made 45 million people homeless while the cyclone Sidr displaced 650,000 in 2007, Aila 842,000 and Bijli 20,000 in 2009.
Failing to ensure livelihoods and losing living places, people from coastal districts are continuously migrating to nearest cities and towns as well as to the already overcrowded Dhaka. Estimations show that every year over half a million people pour into the capital majority of whom are believed to be climate migrants.
External migration is also taking place as many are forced to flee the country failing to repay the loans after losing everything to the river bank erosion and major cyclones. After cyclone Aila hit the area, around 50 per cent people of a village in Satkhira district left it, a handsome of them also migrated to neighbouring countries to secure a living.
In Southkhali union under Bagerhat district almost 30 per cent residents left the area for elsewhere after the cyclone Sidr struck it.
After reaching the cities these climate refugees start living in inhuman conditions in the slums in absence of civic facilities. These slum people suffer from various diseases and children living there suffer from malnutrition and lack of education.
They enter into the severely occupied job market but fail to ensure food for even twice a day. Many of them also start begging in the roadside, while some engage themselves in prostitution to earn foods and living.
Due to the increased number of migration, nowadays new makeshift rooms are being built in the slums everyday while some live in the street further raising public nuisance in the cities. These people, having no family planning measures, also cause baby boom in the already over-crowded urban areas.
http://greenbarta.com/index.php/climate-change/144-impacts-of-climate-change-mount-coastal-people’s-hardship.html
New research by the Colombo based economic think-tank, the Institute of Policy Studies says that traditional rice varieties 
that went out favor in the last 60 years with the advent of hybrids, are much more reseilient than their successors. My story for the Thomson Reuters Foundation http://www.trust.org/item/20131010112839-bhdna/?source=hptop
In Maharashtra a few months ago, BJP president Rajnath Singh drew a link between global warming and the ongoing drought in the state, considered the worst since 1972. He wasn’t the only one to make that connection : in an age of volatile weather, it’s become almost common to look for links between global warming and the latest extreme weather event – be it a hurricane, a drought or a heat-wave.
There are at least two problems with using climate change as a catchall explanation for all sorts of disasters. One is scientific. Although research suggests that extreme weather is increasing, it’s difficult to causally link warming to specific events. The second problem is the more important one: it can become too easy to blame bad weather – an anonymous, apparently unstoppable natural force – for the failures of man-made development policies. In the case of the Maharashtra drought, for instance, an analysis found that the rainfall deficit in the state today is no worse than in 1972. The current drought had more to do with poor water management, bad cropping practices (the shift to water-guzzling sugar cane, for one) and unviable irrigation projects.
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Athar Parvaiz
LADAKH, India, Sep 24 2013 (IPS) – The Ladakh of today is a different world from the one Skarma Namgiyal remembers as a child. Back then, he had taken for granted the breathtaking beauty of its landscape, the purity of the cold mountain air, and the sweet taste of water in its streams.
Today, at 47 years of age, this resident of Tukcha village in Leh district in the north of Kashmir cannot believe they are digging borewells for water, using water to flush toilets in their homes in place of the dry toilets they had been accustomed to, and having to cope with sewage flowing right up to their houses.
Climate change, booming tourism and modern practices are wreaking havoc in this high altitude cold desert in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. The average elevation in Ladakh is 11,000 ft above sea level and temperatures swing between minus 35 degrees Celsius in winters to 35 degrees in summer. Annual rainfall in the region is less than four inches.
Earlier, water from the melting glaciers would be enough to cater to the needs of the locals, Namgiyal tells IPS. But with less snowfall and warmer summers, some of the glaciers have vanished altogether while others too are fast melting.
“Look at Khardongla,” says Namgiyal’s neighbour Tsering Kushu. “It used to be a huge glacier. It is not there anymore.”
More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/09/ladakh-invites-new-scarcities/
Long-term interventions are essential to stem deteriorating food security among victims of frequent extreme weather events in Sri Lanka, experts warn.
In the last 20 months, parts of Sri Lanka have been hit by a severe drought and two bouts of floods that experts at the World Food Programme (WFP) and the government say have worsened the food security of victims.
In the last five years, according to UN estimates, between 3.5 million and 4 million people out of a population of little over 20 million have been affected by natural disasters in Sri Lanka – http://www.trust.org/item/20130917131123-k42lv/?source=hptop
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS) – Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.
Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.
Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.
Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.
Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.
“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.
More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/kashmiri-farmers-unprepared-for-drought/
