Awareness and Perception of the Hilly Tribes on the Issues of Climate Change

Abstract

The present study focuses on the awareness and perception of tribal farmers towards climatic issues and their contributing factors. The study was conducted in The Nilgiris district. Totally 60 tribal farmers were selected from two identified villages from Panthalur taluk considering the maximum area under tribal population. Ex-post facto research design was used. There were totally 5 major issues documented under this study. For each issue, possible contributing factors were identified and ranked by employing Garrett ranking method. The results shows that majority of the respondents were very much aware about the erratic variations in rainfall distribution, temperature and snowfall distribution. More than half of the respondents have strong perception that deforestation causes erratic variations in rainfall distribution and normal snowfall pattern is getting disturbed due to erratic variation in temperature and rainfall in the region. A considerable portion of the respondents were very much undecided about the extreme condition of relative humidity and unpleasant wind velocity which may be due to their lack of awareness. Extension functionaries should take necessary steps to sensitize local tribal farmers on these issues along with appropriate management strategies.