For months India and Pakistan have been dealing with a brutal heatwave, with record-breaking highs of 49 degrees Celsius in April in Pakistan. As the effects of climate change become more severe in the region, we ask how preparedness needs to be reconfigured, accounting for the impact of multiple concurrent extreme weather events, and how these are experienced by local communities.
The ANTICIPATE research team visited Gujarat in the North West of India in March 2022, the hottest in 122 years, as the first round of this unprecedented heatwave swept across Northern and Western India. Even in Gujarat, where summer temperatures generally peak above 45 degrees Celsius, this heat was too early and too severe. Previously unseen variability and volatility such as this create significant challenges for local communities and public agencies as extreme events increasingly become closely timed – something we’ve conceptualised as co-located hazards. Our research explores how co-located hazards are impacting communities in the Gujarat state.
Co-located hazards in Gujarat
An unprecedented rise in temperature in Gujarat only adds to an emerging trajectory of co-located hazards such as severe droughts and floods. The state has always been drought-prone and local communities have developed various coping mechanisms to live with scarcity. However, over the last decade increasingly erratic rainfall patterns and flash floods have created new challenges for local people. In Banaskantha, one of our ANTICIPATE research sites, local communities (farmers, pastoralists, migrant workers, daily-wage Dalit labourers) are now struggling to cope with the contrasting impacts of drought and floods as they occur more frequently. As traditional seasonal patterns shift, many regions in this state now face the prospect of intense heat and drought from May to July, followed by flash floods from August to September.
During our recent field visit, local farmers explained how they now deal with challenges that they are not historically equipped to face. One tobacco and cumin farmer in Banaskantha said, “not only are the rains before or after the usual time, but they have also been too heavy or too light in the past two decades.” Previously effective coping strategies now fail to address the extent of damage from these unpredictable cyclones, floods and droughts.
Barriers to accessing relief
Although Gujarat has experienced deficient rainfall almost every year in the last decade, Banaskantha has only met Government criteria to be declared ‘drought-affected’ for three of these. Though not officially recognised as drought, the rainfall deficit, often referred to as ardh dushkaal (half drought) in other years was still devastating for local communities, and compounded as they were unable to access drought relief, thus exposing them to further shocks.
For farmers, one way to deal with crop losses due to drought or floods is to claim crop insurance to cover their losses. However, our interviews highlighted that insurance can only be claimed when more than a third of their crops are damaged. For the majority of smallholder farmers, damage to even a tenth of their crops is devastating. A uniform cut-off does little to account for the intensity of damage that varies due to land size and ownership, income, access to resources, and cropping patterns. Even when received, the insurance amount is often “too late and too small” to make up for the loss and damage experienced.
Although the immediacy and visibility of a flood may mean that relief measures are deployed instantly due to such extensive damage, our research shows that accessing flood compensation is also not straightforward. In 2017, there was large scale damage to farms, houses, and cattle shelters as well as the loss of life due to floods in Gujarat. Some low-lying farms in our study site were completely washed away. The farmers claim that they have still not received compensation for the damage and the fields remain barren and unsuitable for cultivation. In many cases, families have migrated to nearby towns and cities to make ends meet and escape further shocks.
Gendered impacts
Although women carry the burden of care during shocks and stressors, gendered impacts of such climate events are largely invisible and undocumented. Several women spoke of their intensive daily routines which included milking their animals, walking to and from their fields at least 5 kilometres away, bringing back fodder and feeding livestock multiple times a day. A female farmer in Banaskantha narrated how in the event of extreme rainfall: “It is very difficult to conserve dry firewood and get water to cook for the family, as at that time we do not have access to Panchayat or borewell water. Since the cattle are moved to shelters this only adds to the workload because we are responsible for feeding the animals”.
Despite the unequal burden of work, many women do not have a legal claim to the land they labour on, affecting their access to relief and crop insurance. Even in situations where all such Government criteria are met, they often encounter social and cultural barriers to relief access.
Emerging lessons for future preparedness
1. Opening up drought and flood definitions
Our research, so far, represents a gap in how policymakers and public agencies define a hazard versus the reality of the impact experienced by the most vulnerable. Research shows how scarcity and droughts are socio-culturally constructed. Drought compensatory measures are triggered using arbitrary percentages, yet below these cut-offs, damage is often still severe for vulnerable groups.
In a similar vein, we need to unpack how floods are defined, experienced, and mediated by socio-cultural factors. Intense rainfall events are an emerging phenomenon in the Gujarat region, and farmers often referred to floods as sudden, unexpected deluge leading to widespread damage to farms and fields. Quantifying and implementing damage relief measures, especially as these events become co-located, must go beyond an arbitrary requirement, accounting for context-specific understandings and lived experiences. Similarly, the causes and attribution for such extreme events need to be further investigated. it is evident that historical patterns of droughts and floods are changing, causality and attribution are complex because land-use change and infrastructure development can potentially magnify the incidence and impact of such hazards.
2. Accounting for gendered impacts of co-located hazards
Preparedness and response plans focusing on extreme events can only truly be inclusive if they account for the gendered impacts that multiple climate hazards pose. Positioning women’s perspectives within narratives to build responses to extreme climate events is essential. The extent of women’s full burden in preparedness and response in the face of such changing weather patterns is a key question that we are exploring further in our ANTICIPATE project research.
Co-located hazards have impacts that range from the visibly immediate (loss of life and livelihoods) to sustained long-term effects on land, resource quality and access, livelihood options, and quality of life. While relief and compensatory measures are important to help smooth over the initial shock, we need a socially inclusive view of preparedness that centers the experiences and perspectives of local communities on the frontline. This must focus on the power inequities and knowledge hierarchies that shape the effects of and response to co-located hazards. Through our research, we continue to explore these questions and pathways to preparedness in the face of ever-increasing climate extremes.
