Environment and Climate Change
Study shows low carbon credentials of local food
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Local food enterprises can play a key role in tackling climate change despite the relatively small impact of transport in the sector’s carbon emissions, according to a report.
http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/140
By empowering communities to take greater control over food production, local food initiatives are helping to address environmental issues.
This is the key finding of a new report from Making Local Food Work, a Big Lottery funded programme.
Its study of community-led food initiatives outlines the complexities involved in measuring the carbon impact of food.
While ‘food miles’ are no longer a key focus, bringing food ‘closer to home’ can help in the shift towards low carbon systems.
‘Community food enterprises help people to take ownership of their food and where it comes from,’ said Peter Couchman, director of Making Local Food Work and chief executive of the Plunkett Foundation.
‘This feeling of ownership has helped many to take on the challenge of climate change through a variety of community-led initiatives and enterprises.’
Local food initiatives tend to use less carbon-intensive growing systems and inspire their customers to eat more seasonally and reduce their meat intake.
The report suggests a number of measures in which local food organisations can help reduce carbon emissions and called for a more supportive policy environment.
It says greater support should be provided to allow community food initiatives to work together and increase efficiencies, through for example the creation of regional food hubs.
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Climate change puts species in race to survive
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
Climate change puts species in race to survive
David Adam
Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe, study finds.
Global warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a study that highlights the problems rising temperatures pose to plants and animals.
Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive, and wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests.
“These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” said Chris Field, director of the global ecology unit at the Carnegie Institution in the U.S., who worked on the project. “Expressed as velocities, climate change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals.”
The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined information on current and projected climates to calculate a “temperature velocity” for different parts of the world.
They found mountainous areas would have the lowest velocity of temperature change, meaning animals would not need to move very far to stay in the temperature range of their natural habitat. However, much larger geographic displacements would be required in flatter areas, such as deserts, to allow animals to keep pace with their climate zone.
The researchers also found most areas now protected were not big enough to accommodate these displacements.
Healy Hamilton, director of the Centre for Applied Biodiversity Informatics at the California Academy of Sciences, said the data allowed evaluation of how the current protected area network would perform as attempts were made to conserve biodiversity. “When we look at residence times for protected areas, which we define as the amount of time it will take current climate conditions to move across and out of a given protected area, only 8 per cent of our current protected areas have residence times of more than 100 years. If we want to improve these numbers we need to reduce our carbon emissions and work quickly towards expanding and connecting our global network of protected areas.”
The study found that global warming would have the lowest velocity in tropical and subtropical coniferous forests, where it would move at about 80 metres a year, and in montane (upland areas below the treeline) grasslands and shrublands, where the projected velocity was about 110 metres a year.
The results, published in the journal Nature, show global warming is expected to sweep more quickly across flatter areas such as mangrove swamps and savannas, where it could have velocities above 1 km a year. Across the world, the average velocity is 420 metres a year.
Wildlife in areas with low projected climate-change velocities will not necessarily be better protected, the scientists say. Habitats such as broadleaf forests are often small and fragmented, which makes it harder for species to move. The scientists stress it is difficult to predict what the impact would be on individual trees, insects and other animals.
While trees are estimated to have spread north through Europe after the end of the last ice age at a speed of about 1km a year, this could be due to re-seeding by dormant seeds, which would not be possible if species had to shift to new territories.
The scientists say global warming will cause temperatures to alter so rapidly almost a third of the globe could see climate velocities higher than even the most optimistic estimates of plant migration speeds. Some species might have to be moved by people, and protected areas joined up and enlarged. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009
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Toyota to sell electric hybrids in 2011
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Toyota to sell electric hybrids in 2011
Toyota took the wraps off its new plug-in hybrid today, promising the ecological vehicle would go on sale in 2011 at an “affordable” price.
The plug-in Prius is the first from Toyota, packed with a more powerful battery called lithium-ion, which is different from those used in Prius hybrids on roads today.
A plug-in is more ecological than the regular Prius because it travels longer as an electric vehicle.
About 600 of the vehicles will be introduced for lease in Japan, the US and Europe – 230 in Japan, 150 in the US and 200 in Europe – starting this month, over the first half of 2010, the company said.
Toyota’s plug-in travels 14.5 miles as an electric vehicle on a single charge, and travels 35.4 miles on a litre of fuel. When the charge runs out, a plug-in starts running like a regular hybrid, ensuring drivers will not run out of power on the road.
Toyota did not give a leasing price, or an estimate for its price when it goes on sale in 2011.
Executive vice president Takeshi Uchiyamada said: “I can only say it will be a price that will have potential buyers seeing a plug-in as a viable option,” he said.
He said many hurdles remained for electric vehicles to become widespread, including limited cruising range and cost for the battery.
“We have been working on developing efficient powertrains to be able to use oil as efficiently as possible,” he said.
He said Toyota was waiting until 2011 before commercial sales to gain feedback from users during the leasing period.
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Behind the label: nail polish
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
It may look pretty, but the unmistakable odour of nail polish betrays a cocktail of toxic ingredients
Should you find yourself browsing through the astonishingly large selection of nail polishes in the beauty section of any store you’ll likely find a lot of enticing colours with yummy sounding names like Red Caviar, Tropical Spirit, Mulberry Wine, and Grape Sorbet.
But beyond the pretty colours and reassuringly natural names, the reality of using nail polish is the chemical stench you get while putting it on and a label full of ingredients which are decidedly less enticing and romantic.
Looking good, smelling bad
When you put something on your body that smells that bad and has a ‘flammable’ warning on the bottle, it is worth at least considering what’s in it and whether it really is a beauty essential.
The unmistakable odour of nail polish comes from a mix of alcohols, solvents and resins/plastics that give polish its ability to stick to the nail, deliver an intense colour and resist chipping and peeling.
The solvents in nail polish mostly help it dry faster (so-called safer water based polishes may still contain the same toxic colours and plastics as solvent-based ones, they just take longer to dry). These solvents are the same volatile organic compounds (VOCs) you get in household paints and varnishes and so can provoke the same adverse effects such as headaches, fatigue, difficulty breathing, and eye, skin and airway irritation. Most VOCs are also carcinogenic and neurotoxic.
The Toxic Trio
A vast number of ingredients can go into making a single bottle of nail polish but eco campaigners generally focus on what is known as the ‘toxic trio’ that users need to be aware of: dibutyl phthalate, toluene compounds and formaldehyde.
Phthalates are used to soften plastic, and are hormone disrupting. Studies have linked phthalates to early puberty in girls and low sperm counts in men. Environmental campaigners believe phthalate exposure may contribute to the rising number of uterine problems in women and testicular cancer in men as well as reproductive abnormalities such as hypospadias in male children.
It may also be one of the contributing factors to the rise in infertility in both men and women. The substance dibutyl phthalate (DBP) has long been a common ingredient in nail polish.
Repeated and heavy exposure to DBP may cause nausea and/or vomiting, watery eyes, dizziness and headache. Long-term exposures are linked to kidney and liver damage. DBP has been banned in cosmetics in the EU but it still turns up in some products from time to time.
In the US the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found DBP and other phthalates in the bloodstream of every person they tested, but still the FDA has taken no action to ban the ingredient.
Petrochemicals, anyone?
Toluene is a human reproductive and developmental toxin. It is a skin irritant and is toxic to the nervous system producing symptoms such as tiredness, confusion, weakness, drunken-type actions, and memory loss. In high levels it may affect the kidneys and liver and has been linked to birth defects in laboratory animals. When inhaled it causes extreme fatigue, mental confusion, nausea, headache and dizziness.
Formaldehyde is a common indoor air pollutant because its resins are also used in many building materials. Formaldehyde has caused cancer in the nose and throats of lab animals. Inhaling the fumes can result in watery eyes, headache, a burning throat and labored breathing. Even short term inhalation can cause throat irritation, coughing and shortness of breath in sensitive individuals, and the chemical can easily be absorbed into the skin and can cause rashes.
And the rest…
But even without these ingredients (and many manufacturers are trying to clean up their acts) nail polish is a pretty evil mixture. One of its key ingredients is nitrocellulose, a long-lasting, film-forming agent derived from cellulose. Sounds almost natural, right? Well, bear in mind that before nitrocellulose was put into nail polish, it was used as a component of automobile paint by chemists. It also an ingredient in the explosives used in fireworks and dynamite.
Nitrocellulose is an entirely man-made substance, not found in nature. Its vapours are irritating to skin, eyes and lungs and because of its widespread use it is a fairly common industrial pollutant found in our water supplies.
Most of the colours used in nail polish are synthetic colours associated with a range of neurotoxic and carcinogenic effects. Although nail polishes do sometimes make use of natural colouring ingredients like mica to give them sparkle and shimmer, don’t let yourself feel too comfortable. Mica is a naturally occurring substance but mining it is dangerous and relies heavily on the labour of women and children.
Children working in mica mines can go work more than 20 feet below ground to search and dig for the mineral. Working in loose soil is part of the operation and many instances of deaths have been recorded as a result of collapse of ground on top of workers. Occupational diseases such as silicosis, asthma and bronchitis are common amongst the children and adults (usually small women) who mine the mica that is so widely used in cosmetics.
In Andhra Pradesh, India, water contamination in the areas surrounding the mica mines have given rise to a range of health problems such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and eosinophillia, silicosis and tuberculosis.
Other ingredients in nail polish include:
• Butyl acetate: irritating to skin, eyes and respiratory tract.
• Camphor: irritating to irritate the eyes, nose, and throat. A CNS disrupter associated with dizziness, confusion, nausea and twitching muscles. Readily absorbed through body tissues.
• Isopropyl alcohol: irritating to eyes and mucous membranes; central nervous system depression. Prolonged contact can cause eczema and sensitivity. Animal studies show inhalation can damage the liver.
• Styrene compounds: like toluene and formaldehyde, styrene is a VOC associated with irritation of the skin, eyes and the upper respiratory tract. Chronic exposure affects the central nervous system producing symptoms such as depression, headache, fatigue and weakness and may interfere with kidney function. Based on data from animal studies styrene is also considered a potential human carcinogen.
To make nail polishes harder wearing and more chip resistant some brands are also now including ingredients like polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, or Teflon).
Teflon belongs to the same family of perfluorinated chemicals as Scotchguard and a range of other fabric treatments such as Stainmaster and Gore-Tex. Perfluorinates are considered carcinogens, reproductive toxins and immune system toxins.
A report by the US Environmental Working Group on one particular perfluorinated chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), revealed that this substance can be found in the blood of some 90 per cent of US citizens – in some at levels as high as those found in workers at factories producing perfluorinates. PFCs are virtually indestructible and widespread in the environment and most observers believe that we have not yet begun to understand their full impact on human health or the environment.
Taking it off
Once that long lasting plastic coating of nail polish has dried on your nail, it then needs to be removed with a strong solvent. This essentially is what nail polish remover is. Nail polish remover generally contains things like acetone (irritating to the eyes and lungs) and ethyl acetate (respiratory system and eye irritant; narcotic and neurotoxin and damaging to liver and kidneys). These can be drying to skin and can weaken nails, making them look worse over time.
What are my options?
If you are an adult you really only have two choices: don’t use nail polish, or use it and accept that it is a toxic mix.
If you are a parent the most responsible thing to do is not to expose your children (who are much more sensitive to the effects of toxic chemicals) to the toxic soup on the end of your fingers. And please don’t paint the baby’s nails just because it makes her look so ‘cute’!
There are some exceptions such as the clear varnishes made by Provida which make use of more natural lacquers like shellac and contain plant based alcohols. But really good nail hygiene (i.e. cleaning and trimming nails) and the occasional manicure is still the best and greenest way to have the healthiest looking nails in town.
Useful links
Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website: contains ingredient list for the most popular nail polishes
Pat Thomas is a former editor of the Ecologist
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Copenhagen: peasant farmers can save the planet
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Copenhagen: peasant farmers can save the planet
Carbon reduction potential of ecological farming methods is highlighted at Copenhagen, as protests against industrial agriculture gather strength
Small-scale peasant farmers from the global South are not just among the first to suffer the impacts of climate change: they also offer the most realistic solution to the climate crisis.
This was the message delivered to delegates and minister at the COP15 negotiations by the international peasant movement La Via Campesina today.
Speaking at the UNFCCC conference center, Henry Saragih, La Via Campesina’s international coordinator, urged heads of state to recognise the role peasant agriculture can play in mitigating climate change while at the same time addressing food security.
‘More than 150 peasant farmers have come to Copenhagen to claim that a radical change in the food system can reduce current global emissions from between 50-75 per-cent,’ he said. ‘We are not begging for carbon credits or other trade based solutions; we advocate a diverse food system that supports local markets and ultimately promotes food sovereignty.’
According to the La Via Campesina: ‘Global warming has been taking place for decades but it has been only recently, once transnational corporations have been able to set up huge money-making schemes, that we hear about possible solutions designed and controlled by big companies and backed up by governments.’
Ecological approach needed
Current agricultural production is estimated to contribute 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than double that of its nearest rival, transport, at 13.5 per cent. Via Campesina argues however that simply rebuilding soil fertility to pre-industrial levels has the potential to sequester up to 330bn tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
‘This could realistically be achieved through the ecological approach to agriculture which is already used by millions of peasant farmers across the world,’ said Henry Saragih, ‘however, the positive contribution of sustainable farming to the climate, the environment and employment has so far been overlooked by the Climate talks.’
Via Campesina’s claims are supported by a recent report by the agricultural NGO GRAIN which calculates that sustainable farming techniques could progressively increase soil organic matter by 60 tonnes/hectare over the next 50 years. Soil organic matter has been recognised by, among others, the IPCC as a significant sink for sequestering atmospheric carbon.
Responding to the role of agriculture in the talks, Jonathan Scurlock, the chief climate change advisor to the NFU said:
‘A climate deal without agriculture is “No Deal”. Agriculture is where poverty reduction, food security and climate change intersect and we all want it included in the Copenhagen agreement. Much of the fine detail can await further development by the UN’s subsidiary bodies.’
Petrol station shut down
Meanwhile, half a mile away from the conference centre, more than 600 farmers, activists, landless peasants and young people from around the world converged for a demonstration calling for politicians to ‘change the food system, not the climate!’.
‘Green-washed’ rubbish was dumped outside the headquarters of Danish supermarket giant Danisco to highlight the superficial greening of large food retailers. An action outside the Danish Meat Council drew attention to Denmark’s dependence upon imported soya and cereals to feed its 800,000 intensively farmed pigs.
The demonstration culminated in shutting down one of Copenhagen’s central petrol stations. The protest was aimed at EU legislation introduced in 2007 requiring pump petrol and diesel to contain at least 10 per-cent biofuels by 2020. ‘Agrofuels have been championed by agribusiness as a solution to climate change, however this is not the case,’ said Marie Smekens, representing the European youth movement, Reclaim the Fields.
‘By supporting large scale cereal farming, agrofuels directly encourage mechanisation and dependence on fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides – which are responsible for agriculture’s massive carbon footprint. Demand for agrofuels is already competing for land that would otherwise be used for food production, in turn this results in a direct increase in food imports and carbon emissions.’
Despite the G77 group of developing nations staging a temporary walk-out on Monday in protest at the lack of concessions being made by G20 countries, negotiations have resumed today. While many still expect the conference to deliver a ‘statement of intent’ by Friday, the contributions of both small-scale and industrial agriculture in any agreement are likely to remain contentious.
Ed Hamer is a freelance journalist specialising in agriculture and globalisation issues. He is reporting from Copenhagen
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Britain facing a bleak future of food shortages
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Britain facing a bleak future of food shortages
Britain faces a ‘perfect storm’ of water shortage and lack of food, says the government’s chief scientist, and climate change and crop and animal diseases will add to future woes. Science is now striving to find solutions.
It was an ecological disaster that occurred on the other side of the planet. Yet the drought that devastated the Australian wheat harvest last year had consequences that shook the world. It sent food prices soaring in every nation. Wheat prices across the globe soared by 130%, while shopping bills in Britain leapt by 15%.
A year later and the cost of food today has still to fall to previous levels. More alarmingly, scientists are warning that far worse lies ahead. A “perfect storm” of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict in the next 20 years, the government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned.
In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive, just as the nation’s farmers start to feel the impact of disrupted rainfall and rising temperatures caused by climate change. “If we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move to avoid food and water shortages,” he told a conference earlier this year.
The reliable availability of food – once taken for granted – has become a major cause for alarm among politicians and scientists. Next month several of Britain’s research councils, together with the Food Standards Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Development – will announce a taskforce that will channel the UK’s efforts in feeding its own population and playing a full role in preventing starvation in other nations.
The problem is summed up by Professor Janet Allen, director of research at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). “We will have to grow more food on less land using less water and less fertiliser while producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.
No one said science was easy, of course. Nevertheless, the scale of the problem is striking. It is also unprecedented, says Professor Mike Bevan, acting director of the John Innes Centre in Norfolk. “We are going to have to produce as much food in the next 50 years as was produced over the past 5,000 years. Nothing less will do.”
It is a staggering goal that highlights the depth of the food security crisis that Britain and the world face. Over the next 40 years Britain’s population will rise from 60mn to 75mn while the world’s will leap from 6.8bn to 9bn. Feeding all these people will stretch human ingenuity to its limit. Crop yields will have to jump, a goal that will have to be achieved in the middle of global climatic disruption.
It took a green revolution in the 1960s that involved the development of new crop varieties, greater use of agro-chemicals and changes in farming practices to double production by the 1980s. Now a second revolution of equivalent magnitude is urgently required, say food scientists.
“We can certainly do it, although it won’t be easy,” said Bevan. For a start, farmers will have to increase yields using greatly reduced amounts of agro-fertilisers because their manufacture is energy-intensive.
“What we need are major research programmes to create new crop yields that, in effect, make their own fertiliser and will also be disease-resistant and more resistant to droughts and rising temperatures,” added Bevan.
“The wheat we use today is a hybrid, created by ancient farmers 10,000 years ago, from three different species of wild grass,” said Bevan. “We are going back to these first types of grass and from varieties of these create fresh hybrids.”
The importance of creating new crop varieties is also demonstrated by another threat to food production, the appearance of new crop diseases. For example, in 1999 a new variety of the wheat disease – black stem rust – appeared in Uganda. Since then, Ug99 has spread across Africa and Asia, destroying harvests and threatening the lives of millions.
However, scientists have recently discovered a strain of wheat, known as Sharon grass, that is resistant to Ug99, raising hopes that the outbreak could be contained. “Creating ranges of new crop varieties is going to be vital in feeding the world,” said Allen.
The farmers of tomorrow will not only have to improve yields using less fertiliser, they will also have to be increasingly wary of new agricultural pests and diseases as global temperatures have risen and more and more devastating varieties of viruses and fungi have spread around the globe. Britain will not be immune.
A classic example is provided by bluetongue disease, a virus that affects cattle, sheep, deer and goats and is spread by midges. Sheep are especially vulnerable and one in three can die if infected. The disease was unknown in north-west Europe until 2006, when an outbreak occurred in Holland and spread to nearby countries. Then, in 2007, it spread to Britain. Only swift action by agricultural authorities halted its advance. In future this will be harder to achieve.
“The problem is that the life cycles of diseases such as bluetongue speed up as temperatures go up,” said Dr Chris Oura, of the Institute for Animal Health in Newbury. “The warmer it gets, the more infective they become.” Bluetongue could soon return. More importantly, it is only one of many other exotic, potentially devastating livestock ailments that could be spread by insects.
However, it is not just global warming that is increasing the risk of deadly new epidemics of livestock disease. Globalisation itself threatens to bring infestation in its wake. An important, and very worrying, example is provided by African swine fever virus, said Oura. “As its names suggests, it infects pigs. There is no cure and no vaccine and it kills every animal it infects.
Changes are not confined to exotic foreign viruses. Many of the pests that have been part of the British agricultural scene for centuries are also likely to gain new leases of life as climate change takes a grip on the country. A perfect example is provided by the aphid. “Aphids are one of the country’s main agricultural pests and they inflict about £100m of damage to cereal crops a year,” said Richard Harrington, of the Rothamsted agricultural research centre.
“But as the weather gets warmer and warmer, aphids are now arriving in fields far earlier than they used to do, and that is bad news. Crops in early spring are younger and more susceptible both to the damage inflicted by the aphid itself and also by the viruses they carry.”
One answer is to use increased amounts of pesticides. However, this solution is limited by the spread of pesticide-resistance and by the EU’s increased antipathy to their use because of potentially toxic side-effects.
One ingenious solution involves planting nettles around wheat fields. Parasitic wasps arrive to feed off the aphids that are found in nettles. Then, as the neighbouring wheat grows and aphid infestations arrive, there is a ready supply of wasp predators to deal with them.
Of course, some answers to the threat of the forthcoming perfect storm and the threat to our food security involve political and economic solutions as well. The end of cheap supermarket deals, restraints on water use and the need to change farming practice have all been touted. In the case of farming practices, economists argue that small farms are too inefficient and should be incorporated into larger outfits, for example. Owners of small hill farms oppose the idea, however. – Guardian News and Media
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Indian farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
Indian farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns
By Nita Bhalla
GORAKHPUR, India (Reuters) – As global leaders and top scientists in Copenhagen debate how to deal with climate change, farmers in flood-prone areas of northern India are taking it into their own hands to adapt to shifts in the weather.
For decades, people of Uttar Pradesh, whose population is more than half that of the United States, have been witnessing erratic weather, including increasingly intense rainfall over short periods of time.
The rain, combined with heavy mountain run-off from nearby Nepal, which is also seeing heavier-than-usual rains, has inundated villages, towns and cities in the region.
Such floods have destroyed homes, crops and livestock, highlighting the fact that the poorest in countries such as China and India are most at risk from climate change.
While world leaders in Copenhagen argue over who should cut carbon emissions and who should pay, experts say low-cost adaptation methods, partly based on existing community knowledge, could be used to help vulnerable farmers.
In the fields of Manoharchak village, where terms such as “global warming” are unknown, such experiments are bearing fruit, changing the lives of poor farmers who outsmart nature using simple but effective techniques to deal with rising climate variability.
“For the last three years, we have been trying to change our ways to cope with the changing weather,” said Hooblal Chauhan, a farmer whose efforts have included diversifying production from wheat and rice to incorporate a wide variety of vegetables.
“I don’t know what those big people in foreign countries can do about the weather, but we are doing what we can to help ourselves,” said the 55-year-old from Manoharchak, situated 90 km (55 miles) north of the bustling city of Gorakhpur.
IMPROVISATION
Villagers here have raised the level of their roads, built homes with foundations up to 10 feet above ground, elevated community handpumps and created new drainage channels.
Supported by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group — a research and advocacy group — farmers are also planting more flood-tolerant rice, giving them two harvests a year where they once had one, and diversifying from traditional crops to vegetables such as peas, spinach, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
The diversity of crops, they say, is particularly beneficial when their wheat and rice fail. And the vegetables give them not only a more varied and nutritional diet, but also help in earning an income when excesses are sold.
Increasingly, intense rain means farmers in the region also have to contend with silt deposition from long periods of water-logging in their farms.
But 50-year-old widow Sumitra Chauhan, who grows about 15 different vegetables as well as rice and wheat on her two-acre plot, says she has learned ways to overcome the problem.
“We plant our (vegetable) seedlings in the nurseries and then when the water drains, we transfer them to the land so there are no delays,” she said, standing in her lush green plot packed with vegetables including mustard, peas, spinach and tomatoes.
CLIMATE REFUGEES
Farmers have also started using “multi-tier cropping” where vegetables like bottle gourd and bitter gourd are grown on platforms raised about 5-6 feet above the ground and supported by a bamboo frame.
Once the water-logged soil drains, farmers can plant the ground beneath the platforms with vegetables and herbs such as spinach, radish and coriander.
Warmer temperatures and an unusual lack of rain during monsoon periods in eastern Uttar Pradesh have also led to dry spells. To cope, villagers have contributed to buying water pumps for irrigation, lowering their dependence on rain.
According to Oxfam, which is supporting the action group’s work in Uttar Pradesh, millions of people in India have been affected by climate-related problems.
Some have been forced into debt. Others have migrated to towns and cities to search for manual labor or have had to sell assets such as livestock to cope.
“It is true that developing countries need a lot of investment to adapt to the effects of climate change, but small and marginal farmers, who are some of India’s poorest, can make a start by using simple, cheap techniques to help themselves,” said Ekta Bartarya of the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group.
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