Impact of Climate Change and Community Resilience To
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CADME-Save the Children IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO DISASTERS IN NINE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF ANDHRA PRADESH Rapid assessment on impact of climate change and community resilience to disasters in 9 coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh Analysis of district study data and preparation of report by VENKATESH SALAGRAMA Final Report (12 April 2013) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report is the summary of work done in the nine coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh, and the following CADME partner organisations are acknowledged for their contribution to the district studies in terms of planning, execution, analysis and documentation of the district reports, and for their enthusiastic and meaningful participation in the series of consultations and workshops conducted as part of the study: SRIKAKUALM DISTRICT WEST GODAVARI 1. SWEEP 1. NCYS 2. YARD 2. SPARK 3. BREDS 3. AWARD 4. REALS 4. SHERDS VIJAYANAGARAM DISTRICT KRISHNA 1. NEED 1. CRASA 2. ASRA 2. PPSS 3. SABALA 3. SNEHA 4. SRUJANA GUNTUR VISAKHAPATNAM 1. SEEDS 1. SVDS 2. SERVICE 2. MAHILA ACTION 3. MITRA 3. VIKASA PRAKASAM 4. NYS 1. SNIRD EAST GODAVARI 2. SUPPORT 1. CREATORS CHARITABLE 3. RAKSHANA ORGANISATION 4. SARDS 2. PALLESIRI NELLORE 3. SASS 1. CJWS 4. ARISE 2. RDO 3. APPLE 4. NAVAJEEVANA The author of this summary report would like to thank the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), whose 2011 study entitled ‘Climate Change and Fisheries: Perspectives from Small-scale Fishing Communities in India on Measures to Protect Life and Livelihood’ provided the basic framework of analysis for this study. 1 | P a g e Contents Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................................1 Map of Coastal Andhra Pradesh showing the Coastal Vulnerability Index ...........................2 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................3 2. Objective of the study .......................................................................................................4 3. Target groups for the study ...............................................................................................6 4. Methodology of the study .................................................................................................6 5. A few constraints ..............................................................................................................7 Study findings .............................................................................................................................9 6. Livelihood context in coastal Andhra Pradesh ..................................................................9 7. Climate change impacts in Andhra Pradesh .................................................................... 11 7.1 Difficulties in assessing Climate Change ..................................................................... 11 7.2. Key Climate Change factors of importance to the target communities ......................... 12 7.3. Possible Causes for the climate change phenomena in target areas ........................... 19 7.4. Consequences/impacts of climate change phenomena on the stakeholder groups ..... 22 7.5. Community-based adaptive/mitigation strategies to cope with climate change ......... 26 8. Some key conclusions from the district studies ............................................................... 33 9. Suggested actions based on the findings from the study .................................................. 34 9.1. No simple answers ...................................................................................................... 34 9.2. Potential areas for intervention.................................................................................... 35 9.3. Implementation issues ............................................................................................. 40 10. References: ................................................................................................................. 41 Annexures ................................................................................................................................. 42 Annexure 1: Study questionnaire for district studies .............................................................. 42 Annexure 2: CADME Partner NGOs involved in the study ................................................... 44 1 | P a g e Map of Coastal Andhra Pradesh, covered by the study, highlighting the Coastal Vulnerability Index for different areas Coastal Vulnerability Index integrates the differentially weighted rank values of the five variables: coastal geomorphology, coastal slope, shoreline change, mean spring tide range, and significant wave height, based on which the coastline is segmented into low-, moderate-, high-, and very high risk categories. The CVI for Andhra Pradesh shows that about 43% of its 1,030-km-long coast is under very high-risk, followed by another 35% under high-risk if the sea level rises by ~0.6 m, displacing more than 1.29 million people living within 2.0 m elevation in 282 villages in the region From Ahana Lakshmi 2011, citing Nageswara Rao et al, 2008 2 | P a g e IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO DISASTERS IN NINE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF ANDHRA PRADESH 1. Introduction Over the last two decades, climate change (CC) has come to be recognised as an important process posing significant threat to the global environment and the populations living in it. The impacts of global warming and its attendant changes in weather and seasonal patterns and the incidence of disasters are increasingly felt at all levels of society, but its most intense effects appear to be focused on the people and communities dependent upon primary sector occupations, i.e., agriculture, forestry, fisheries with predictions suggesting a further intensification of these effects in the medium to long-term. 1 WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE? Climate is generally defined as the weather patterns over a long period of time. The earth’s climate regime is an outcome of the incoming solar radiation and its interaction between the hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. The atmosphere has a mix of various gases which play an important role in the earth’s climate regions. Gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, despite their low concentrations in the atmosphere, play an important role by trapping some of the heat reflected by the earth that would otherwise escape into space. Hence these gases are also known as the Greenhouse Gases (GHG) and this phenomenon known as the natural greenhouse effect enables maintenance of the earth’s average temperature about 33°C warmer than it otherwise would be. Of the three factors that directly influence the energy balance of the earth, viz., the total energy influx on the earth (which depends on the earth’s distance from the sun and on solar activity), the albedo (capacity of the earth to reflect light) and the chemical composition of the earth’s surface, only the last has changed significantly (with the increase in) Carbon Dioxide being of greatest concern in the role it plays in increasing radiative forcing which translates to increased temperatures on earth. According to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report2, since 1750, it is extremely likely that humans have exerted a substantial warming influence on climate and this estimated radiative forcing is likely to be at least five times greater than that due to solar irradiance changes. The report also states that the global average surface temperature has increased, especially since about 1950 with a 100-year trend of 0.74°C ± 0.18°C. The rate of warming averaged over the last 50 years (0.13°C ± 0.03°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years. The impacts have been seen in cases such as the increased melting of snow in the northern hemisphere, with a consequent increase in floods in the lower plains. The atmosphere does not function in isolation. Flows of energy take place between the different spheres. It has been found by the IPCC that surface temperatures over land have warmed at a rate faster than over the oceans in both hemispheres. It has been observed that over the period 1961 to 2003, global ocean temperature has risen by 0.10°C from the surface to a depth of 700 m. Heat and freshwater are transported by ocean currents. The biochemical status of the ocean plays an important role for life in the ocean waters. Warming seas also result in a rise in sea level which can have an impact on the coastal zone. 1 From Ahana Lakshmi, 2011 2 IPCC, 2007 3 | P a g e Thus, while some of the CC processes are quite possibly natural phenomena and, in a few cases, manifestations of long – as yet uncharted – cyclical processes, it is also widely agreed that the contribution of the human actions – mostly in the form of green house gas (GHG) emissions – is also very significant and increasing. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognises the human contribution to climate change and defines climate change as: as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods”3. Although the impacts of global warming and its attendant phenomena tend to be generally widespread and cover every area, their most immediate and direct impact