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Gender and Climate Adaptation Policy

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Adaptation interventions value local weather data and women's labour

Research

Aberrations in the weather parameters, now a regular phenomenon has an influence on the agriculture based livelihoods. The study undertaken documented viable adoption models in three vulnerable climatic zones viz., Andhra Pradesh (drought prone), Uttar Pradesh (Flood prone) and West Bengal (Cyclone prone). In each state five villages were selected and in them five organic-agriculture practicing farmers and five conventional (chemical) practicing farmers were selected.

Practices of both conventional and organic farmers were recorded in the first year covering one rabi and one kharif cycle. Observations from the field included crop yields, pest incidence, disease incidence, major crops grown, costs of cultivation, crop yield; coping mechanisms, gender-based tasks, gender-based decision-making roles, etc. Some of the findings are:

• Localised weather variations shows significant impacts on agricultural practices

• Weather knowledge is critical for farmers to take real-time decisions on sowing time, pest management, harvesting, etc.

• Farmers are ‘weather literate’ and able to interpret weather data to take decisions on specific farming activities. This action research yielding timely, local data has been a new experience for them!

• Women are the backbone of agriculture and put in many more hours than men.

• Certain adaptation practices like making the vermicompost, increases time, labour inputs and drudgery work for women farmers.

• The highest number of women owning land are in West Bengal, the next highest in Andhra Pradesh and only a few women own land in Uttar Pradesh.

In West Bengal more women own land but the size of their landholdings is very small compared to the lesser women in Andhra Pradesh where the size of their landholdings is much larger. In Uttar Pradesh, the few women who own land have very small holdings.