Implications of climate change and wetland degradation on the traditional rice varieties of Kerala

Abstract

Climate change is causing catastrophic events and is intensifying the effects of natural calamities. Agriculture is the most sensitive sector which is affected due to climate change. Its impacts are global but the most vulnerable ones are developing countries because of their strong dependence on the agriculture sector and the natural resources for meeting their developmental activities. In a developing country like India, about 70% of the rural population is engaged in agriculture and other allied activities. Out of which about 80% of the farmers are small and marginal landholders whose livelihood completely depends on agriculture. These farmers do a wide variety of agricultural practices and crop cultivation across the country, but the unpredictable climate changes causing a major threat to this sector. Rice is the major food crop for the majority of the population in the country. The unpredicted climate reduces both the quantity and the quality of rice production. Altered precipitation, desertification, land and wetland degradation, freshwater decline for irrigation, biodiversity loss and ecosystem function, and drought due to climate change are causing instability in food security along with developmental pressures like the degradation of wetlands, increasing land demand for developments, etc. These effects not only result in a decrease in food production but also causes a decrease in the area of cultivation due to the shifting of agricultural lands to other purposes, resulting in the loss of many agro-biodiversities and ecosystems. The growing population and increasing food demand cause a major challenge in agriculture production. So to overcome this over time the farmers had come up with modern practices, modern varieties of species that are more tolerant to climate change and have high productivity. But this is causing the threat of disappearing of many indigenous species and local varieties of rice which are more climate tolerant. India has 15 agro-climatic zones and is rich in numerous indigenous rice varieties. Many of these are aromatic, medicinal, and are resistant to drought, salinity, waterlogging, and flood. The preservation of existing native conventional assortments is truly necessary as they will assume a significant part in the improvement of reasonable agribusiness and by the protection of agroecosystem's profile variety from hereditary disintegration. The conservation of the local varieties is much needed not only to conserve biodiversity but also to protect the land-use changes. Over the years the rice fields are being converted into other crops, generally, cash crops and plantation crops. This transformation is continuous and in the end prompts the difference in land use from agribusiness to non-agriculture. Thus there is a basicl need in understanding the variation of rice agriculture and the land-use changes at the local agro-climatic zones. Numerous plocy level and scientific proposals have covered agrculture changes because of environmental change, however there is still emerges a dire need in giving approach level ideas by understanding spatial varieties of the environmental change impacts so the transformation measures at the local level can be focused on suitably, assisting the ranchers' with improving their capacities in adapting up to questionable climatic conditions for rice creation here in future and the land use assignments. The study area selected is the Palakkad district of Kerala, which lies in the Western Ghats with a tropical climate. Palakkad is known as the ‘rice bowl of Kerala’. The study has come up with the rice cultivation vulnerable zones in the district and the adaptation and conservation strategies.