Drought is a climatic condition, which is characterized by lack of precipitation and dryness. Drought prone areas are identified by a deficit of rainfall received in a particular area. The parameters to identify drought prone areas vary depending on the natural climatic conditions.
Drought can be defined as the deficiency in precipitation over an extended period, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage causing adverse impacts on vegetation, animals, and/or people (NOAA, 2008).
It is a temporary anomaly, unlike aridity, which is a permanent climatic condition. Droughts are different from other natural disasters as they are slow-onset shocks with prolonged and potentially devastating consequences.
The impacts are generally difficult to quantify as the duration may range from months to years and no single indicator can identify precisely the onset and severity of the event. Dry conditions occur due to different reasons thus making it difficult to outline a particular definition of drought.
There are four approaches based on which drought has been classified to reflect different perspectives (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2009).
- Meteorological drought is usually defined based on the dryness and the duration of the dry period with respect to long term average – 25 per cent or less to the long term average is normal, 26-50 per cent is moderate and more than 50 per cent is severe.
- Agricultural drought links various characteristics of meteorological drought to agriculture impacts like precipitation shortages, soil water deficit, reduced ground water level needed for irrigation etc. It is identified by four consecutive weeks of meteorological drought with a weekly rainfall of 50 mm or less from and six such consecutive weeks for the rest of the year. Almost 80 per cent of crops in India are planted in the Kharif season.
- Hydrological drought refers to persistently low water volumes in streams, rivers and reservoirs. Such conditions arise even in times of average (or above average) precipitation when increased usage of water diminishes the reserves. This results in significant societal impacts.
The drought-prone areas of the country are confined to the arid, semi-arid, and sub-humid regions of peninsular and western India. Around 68 per cent of the area in India is found to be prone to drought to different degrees. 35 per cent of the country’s area which receives annual rainfall between 750 mm and 1125 mm is considered drought prone while 33 per cent receiving less than 750 mm is considered chronically drought prone (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2016).
Impact of drought disasters
The impacts of drought are multidimensional because the adequate availability of water is an integral factor for agricultural production, and a country’s ability to produce goods and services. Some of the direct impacts of drought are reduction in agricultural production and heightened food insecurity among the poor and vulnerable sections, lack of access to clean water, depletion of water resources, damage to ecosystems and biodiversity, fire hazards etc.
The indirect impacts are reduction of income for farmers, increase in food and fodder prices, defaults from agricultural loans causing debt and bondage, farmer suicides, social conflicts over minimal resources etc. Displacement of people, migration and loss of livelihood are also some of the very common indirect impacts. Thus, droughts have a cascading impact on all levels of social strata, which could be environmental, economic or social.
The 2016 Drought Management Manual and the Crisis Management Plan
Policies and frameworks undergo amendments routinely and one such is the revision Manual for Drought Management, 2009 that was amended in 2016. The revised manual states that the central and state governments shall do the monitoring of drought by following parameters which indicates the onset of drought like situation – rainfall, remote sensing based vegetative indices, crop situation indices, hydrological indices, ground truth variation which is further elaborated into 13 sub-points (Indian Drought Manual, 2016).
The intensity of drought, or a drought disaster shall be declared depending on the values of three indicators. This move was met with criticism from states like Karnataka as the new norms are technically extensive and too stringent to be practical.
Furthermore, the ‘moderate’ category of drought is being omitted from the manual, which means the drought prone areas would come under two categories which is either ‘normal’ or ‘severe’. Thus, states are eligible for financial assistance from the centre only in case of severe drought.
The Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare (DAC&FW) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is the apex body for formulation of policies and various institutional structures at national and state level for drought management.
Drought Management Cell (DMC) of the department helps gather information from diverse sources, monitor drought conditions, issue advisories, coordinate Ministries within the Central and State Government and other concerned agencies to mitigate the effects of drought. The department also updates and reviews the Crisis Management Plan (CMP) every year.
CMP focuses on management interventions required during the time of drought disasters. It is a programme that delineates roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, including Central and State Governments and their agencies in managing the calamity.
Some important features of the Management Plan includes: Crisis Management Framework (CMF) aimed at identification of fundamental crisis situations like phases of crisis, magnitude, impact, triggers and strategic response mechanism.
It is also envisaged that a Crisis Management Group (CMG) for drought management would come up to manage the various phases of drought at central, state and district level. Another important feature is the creation of separate Drought Monitoring Centers (DMCs) at state level which would report to the State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMA).
Unfortunately, the problem for drought management is not the lack of policies and framework but the paucity of proper formulation and implementation. The recent episodes of drought disasters of unprecedented drought in south Indian states are an indicator of lack of efficient management strategy.
In the year 2016, Tamil Nadu was monsoon deficient by close to 62 per cent, Kerala faced its worst drought in 115 years affecting more than 17,000 ha of agricultural land and Andhra Pradesh recorded rainfall deficient by 23 per cent. Thus, strengthening and enhancing the institutional mechanisms for monitoring and reporting of drought at national and state level is essential.
Along with effective policies, development in technology through enhanced scientific research could foster the already available monitoring and early warning systems of drought conditions. The use of remote sensing to provide timely meteorological data and information like soil moisture, reservoir storage etc. to farmers would help in mitigating the economic and social distress caused by drought.
This could be done through media management and use of social networking system. It would also enhance the timely execution of District Agriculture Contingency Plan (DACP). Some other measures that could be taken up in grassroots level are investing in water harvesting system technologies and availing subsidised drought prone seed varieties to farmers.
Moreover, building drought adaptation strategies is also inevitable as drought conditions and unpredictable shift in rainfall pattern is projected to increase due to climate change. Food security of a nation is deeply interlinked with drought as it poses as a constant threat to reduction of agricultural produce and subsequent food shortage.
It affects the whole dimension of agriculture- production, availability, stability, accessibility and utilization. Thus, it is very important for an agrarian nation like India to be drought smart and drought resilient to sustain the huge population.
All of the preventive and mitigating measures for drought disasters require coordinated efforts and systematic communication between the central and state governments, scientific institutions, relevant agencies and farmers alike.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.