Caritas India under the Partners for Resilience program works on Changing Climatic Seasonality in Bihar and Role of Disaster Risk reduction , Bihar ka Badalta Mausam aur DRR ki Bhumika
Bihar which has been known
traditionally as state with abundant water resources, has over a decade is
gradually moving towards a water deficit state. It might not look as a very bad
scenario from the national level when we say that water level in north Bihar
has gone down to 40 to 80 ft. or in southern Bihar to 180 ft. But when we see
from the perspective of Bihar this has been a major shift and its impact too is
now getting visible. Factors such as climate variability and change
contribute to the vulnerability of individual farms, as well as on whole rural
communities. Climate change is posing
considerable challenges for Bihar and its farmers, farm workers and all. The changing climate seasonality is already
significantly impacting socio economic development and the environment of Bihar. There has been more pronounced rise in
economic, social and environmental damages in the last decade or half. These damages can also be testimony to as our
lack of understanding and our current
inability to prepare for adaptation to climate, including its extremes. The way
we are able to adapt, or not, to changing or extreme weather and climate
conditions contributes to the
sustainability to development of Bihar. In this background, BIAG ( Bihar
Inter Agency Group) Core committee on
October 2013 decided on a series of workshop at Divisional level covering
flood and drought conditions in Bihar. The Divisional workshops will bring out
the issues related at the district level regarding changing seasonality and
what short of preparedness should be done by Gov. farmers, farm workers and experts.
The outcome of the 6 divisional workshops will be shared with the state Gov. all
major stakeholders for coming out with planned mitigation through steps of DRR. On 19 November 2013 Caritas India
under the partners for resilience programme along with Bihar Inter Agency
organized a workshop in Bhojpur, Bihar. The chief guest of the workshop was Mr.
Rakesh Kuamar, SDM, Bhojpur. The main agenda of the workshop was to have an
interface with recognized scientist and unrecognized scientist i.e. farmers.
There were total 16 marginal farmers and 10 agriculture labourer and 8 NGOs
participated. The main resource person for this workshop was Dr. P.K. Devedi,
District Officer, Krishi Vigyan Kendra. In his presentation he highlighted due
to excess exploitation of natural resource there is a visible imbalance in
nature, increase in temperature. Due to this change in climate the direct
effects is visible in our agriculture and health too. The Overall coordination
among the NGOs and government counterparts at divisional level was done by Mr.
Bhaskar from Yatharth.
The following issues were agreed
upon in the concluding session.
a) The
changing seasonality in Patna Division is very mild and farmers are not
recognizing its effect.
b) There
should be some serious steps to be thought of to ban the excess use of chemical
in agriculture production.
c) There
is a need to rebuild the nature like plantation, afforestation and wetland
management.
d) The
delay in seasonality like when farmer need warm temperature for crops than they
are facing erratic rain and vice versa.
