Abstract
Drought is among the most dreaded threats as far as natural disasters are concerned wielding, as it does, a significant impact on ecosystems, people’s livelihoods, and the socio-economic development of a country. A significantly large geographic area of India happens to be drought prone. In order to understand people’s response to the impacts of drought and their coping strategies, it is crucial to understand their perceptions. Studies investigating community perceptions relevant to drought impacts and concomitant adaptive behaviours are rare in India. This paper documents communities’ perceptions of impacts of drought on their livelihood assets and adaptation practices. It does this with the help of the fuzzy cognitive mapping approach in the Mahabubnagar district of India’s Telangana state. In order to develop pathways for drought resilient livelihoods we ran simulations for future drought scenarios with various bundles of adaptation strategies enabling us to evaluate their effectiveness in providing resilience against drought. The study also tested the suitability of various activation rules and transformation functions, used for running simulations. Incorporating stakeholders’ perceptions, knowledge and beliefs about impacts of droughts, and engaging them in the process of developing drought resilient livelihoods is expected to fine-tune the drought related policy-making.
Highlights
1.1 Climate change and droughts in IndiaClimate-related extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and cyclones cause ecosystem disturbances while wielding a significant impact upon human-environment systemsElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Institute of Rural Management Anand, Anand, IndiaClimatic Change (2017) 140:179–193(IPCC 2014)
Variability of the South-West Monsoon is linked to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the equatorial Indian Ocean anomalies and the Atlantic Ocean climate anomalies (Kumar et al 2013)
ENSO events are expected to increase in number with climate change (OECD 2010) leading to drought and drought like situations in India
Summary
Climate-related extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and cyclones cause ecosystem disturbances while wielding a significant impact upon human-environment systems. High temporal and spatial rainfall variability coupled with huge disparities in the country’s physiographic and climatic conditions led to droughts of varying intensities each year, irrespective of monsoonal conditions (Rathore et al 2014). Mishra et al (2014) estimated the occurrence and frequency of drought episodes for the periods of 1951–1979 and 1980–2008. Droughts with higher frequencies were recorded in northern, north-eastern, eastern coastal, and peninsular India during the early observed period (1951–1971). Drought episodes stepped up in the Gangetic plains and western India during the late observed period (1980–2008). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013) predicted a higher intensity and duration of drought episodes all across the globe in the early 21st century. ENSO events are expected to increase in number with climate change (OECD 2010) leading to drought and drought like situations in India
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