Climate and Weather

A widespread view that is gaining ground is that climate related migration could evolve into a global crisis by displacing a large number of people from their homes and forcing them to flee. Christian Aid postulates that a billion people could be permanently displaced by climate change related phenomenon such as droughts, floods and hurricanes (Christian Aid 2007). The fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mentioned the “potential for population migration” due to increase in the number of areas affected by droughts and an increase in the intense tropical cyclones activities (IPCC 2007: 18). In particular, it seems likely that significant numbers of people will be displaced, either temporarily or permanently, from their homes as a consequence of global warming (Stern 2006). Available scientific evidences indicate that a large number of people might be displaced due to climate change. However, much of the literature on this issue refers to the question of whether the   people forced to migrate as a consequence of climate change should be described as climate refugees. There is no internationally agreed definition of the term “climate refugee” and the extent to which these displaced persons constitute a separate identifiable group. Although it is now widely recognised that climate change will significantly adversely affect India, there are few studies available on how climate change is going to affect the migration of people. It has been asserted that 70,000 people out of the 4.1 million living in the Indian part of the Sundarbans islands would be rendered homeless by 2020 (EPW, 6 June 2009).

Climate change has been denied, labelled as a  myth and a political manoeuvre or synergised with individual weather events.

Content Courtesy: AlertNet

Activists from the Climate Revolution initiative in India have discovered a crucial tool in their battle to hold the government accountable on its climate policies: the country's landmark Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Read more about Climate Revolution's work on RTI on their website here.

Prof Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, Professor and Head, Centre for Development and Environment Policy, IIM Calcutta, speaks to Bappaditya Chatterjee of Business Economics , on the consequences of global warming and climate change on India's water resources, in the magazine's June 1-15 2010 issue.

The Law, Environment and Development Journal published by School of Oriental and African Studies and International Environmental Law Research Centre, has brought out a special issue on Climate Change.

This document by Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, highlights the importance of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin as an important source of water for many of the countries in South Asia, and the crucial role of negotiations in the context of the impending water crisis threatening the basin with the phenomenon of climate change.

The document argues that traditional water engineering has been found to be highly reductionistic and ineffective in bringing about development in the GBM basin and the continuing poverty in the GBM basin can be linked to the absence of a holistic ecological perspective, use of an incomplete framework for economics and ignoring of long-run economic costs of the actions proposed.

The paper discuses climatological and fluctuation features of important parameters of the Hydrological Wet Season (HWS), viz. starting and ending dates, duration, seasonal rainfall/rainwater and surplus rainfall/rainwater potential individually for the eleven major and thirty six minor river basins, the West Coast Drainage System (WCDS) and the rest of the country. It is based on reliable monthly rainfall data from a well spread network of three hundred and sixteen rain gauge stations from 1813 upto 2006.

The paper observes that the average period of the HWS is in close conformity with the southwest Monsoonal Rainy Season (MRS) over the basins in the Core Monsoon Rainfall Regime (CMRR). In the Mixed Monsoon Rainfall Regime (MMRR) covering south peninsula, northeast and extreme north, the HWS is of longer duration compared to the MRS due to extra-monsoonal rainfall over there. The mean starting date of the HWS is May 30, ending October 11 and the duration is 135 days for the entire country.

Organizer's:

Organizer: Climate Himalaya Initiative

Venue: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee-IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

Description:

This document by International Water Management Institute (IWMI) highlights the urgent need for improving irrigation systems to enhance food production to meet the needs of the growing population in Asia, in the context of increasing urbanisation and the challenges posed by climate change.

Experience has shown that improvement in irrigation systems have led to improvement in agricultural growth in Asia in the past where irrigated agriculture still continues to be the heart of rural growth.

However, experts estimate that demand for food and animal feed will double during the next fifty years in Asia. This will require better management of the existing irrigated lands as opening up of new alternatives is constrained by lack of land and water resources.