Assessing the impact of heat stress on livelihood: case of Jhansi District

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as the major greatest challenge to sustainable development worldwide, and its massive, global impact threatens the poorest and most vulnerable tremendously. Extreme heat is one of them, the risk to human health and wellbeing as well as to infrastructure and services. In India, over the past few decades, there has been a rise in extreme heatwave days and heat mortality rates. In rural areas, farmers & marginal labours are more exposed to heat and heatwaves, a large number of the population obtain their living from outdoor farming which implies that increases in outdoor heat can have significant effects on the livelihood. The people who are largely reliant on outdoor farming need to improve their adaptive captative in terms of their livelihood pattern so that they can be more heat resilient. The present research examines vulnerability and assessing the impact of heat stress on rural communities in the Jhansi district in the Uttar Pradesh state of India. The total area of the district is 5024 sq. Km. Heat stress puts additional strain on natural resources which affects farmers livelihood in the area. The district has 8 community development blocks, where hotspot areas are identified by analysis of temporal changes in average land surface temperature (LST), variations in rainfall pattern and changes in vegetation over the period of time by Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), its impacts on land use land cover (LULC) in the region. There has been an increase in built-up area by 46% and agricultural plantation over the last ten years. It is also observed that the trend of rising in average land surface temperature from 2000 to 2018 is about 1.71 C. Two blocks are selected one which has the highest vulnerability of heat stress – Babina other lower vulnerability – Moth block. Furthermore, analysis is done on Babina block, temporal changes in water bodies and land use land cover pattern. The purpose of this study to assess livelihood vulnerability to heat stress based on the IPCC- Livelihood Vulnerability Index (IPCC-LVI) based on 31 sub-indicators of environment, through IPCC-identified components: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, capturing inter-connected interactions based on people perception within two selected blocks. Under this study quantitative framework, based on district and block-level secondary data and qualitative data by primary surveys with a sample size of 78 households and 15 focus groups discussions which has been collected. All occupation workers are covered in the primary survey like Farming, agricultural labour, non-agricultural labour, MGNRES labours. Babina block is more vulnerable than Moth, factors that make is exposure to climate change high temperature, less rainfall, working outdoor and roofing materials. From the primary survey, people living in houses with tin roofs are more uncomfortable as compared to cement roof houses. Existing coping mechanism seems insufficient for preventing people from outdoor and indoor heat stress. People from poorer household have also found socio-economic and livelihood challenges when they adopt coping strategies. The study reviews the existing policies and schemes at the central, state and district level for various sectors to resolve the prevailing issues. As heat action plan is an intervention by the government of India but there is a lack of accountability and there is no integration of land use map in the identification of vulnerable population and heat-health risks zones. Global issues such as climate change and increasing heat stress were not considered as concerns at the local level for addressing vulnerable areas. Diminishing green cover in the district was not discussed either. Rising heat stress was not included in the building bylaws either, keeping in mind the future implication of the same at rural areas. Theses finding will help to propose developing strategies for vulnerable sections of the society and minimize the adverse impact of heat stress on livelihood in the region. Sustainable agriculture practices make agriculture more productive, sustainable, remunerative and climate-resilient by promoting location specific Integrated /Composite Farming Systems. The use of land resources planning, including soils, water, animals and plants, for the production of goods to meet changing human needs, while simultaneously ensuring the long-term productive potential of these resources and the maintenance of their environmental functions. Housing designs should be improved to promote sufficient ventilation and to reduce the adverse effects of tin roofs.