Building Climate Resilience

The Global Climate Risk Index 2021 has positioned India as the seventh most vulnerable country to climate-related challenges. This ranking underscores the heightened risk faced by smallholder farmers, landless agricultural labourers and communities dependent on forest products, who possess limited adaptive capabilities. These individuals are particularly susceptible to the escalating variability in climate patterns, which often translates into damaged crops and precarious livelihoods, further exacerbating their vulnerability to environmental fluctuations. 

Our Mobile Vaani Network with its hyper-local participatory media platforms help:

  • Develop an understanding of how vulnerable these communities are to climate change, and their existing perceptions of climate change

  • Constantly monitor how climate change is affecting marginal communities, and how they have been coping with climate change

  • Communities identify and share relevant coping mechanisms (diversification of livelihoods, crop insurance, watershed development), and convey to them how existing government schemes (e.g., MGNREGA, Jal Jeevan Mission) could be leveraged to build resilience to climate change

Community

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Rural and Indigenous Communities

Rural and indigenous communities have already been adapting to the changing climate without having articulated it as a climate problem to understand their vulnerability. This results in a lack of understanding of their rights and livelihoods from a climate resilience perspective. Our campaigns help provide that perspective.

Civil Society and Government

Civil society organisations and government officials at the state level need support in the assessment and development of a climate resilience framework to understand data coming from the field and also study it to develop and design interventions which help develop climate resilience at a gram panchayat level.

Research and Policy Institutions

 

Our data-driven approach and the insights and use cases which are derived as a result of our participatory media approach result in actionable data which can drive policy design at a national level.

Our Impact Pathways

TLRF union leader(L) in Virudhunagar Submit their petition to a Panchayath Leader (R), February 2020

Data-Driven Intervention

The process starts with gathering data from the field using our IVRS platforms and using telephonic surveys to understand how livelihoods and livelihood choices have changed in recent years. The gathered data helps inform and design our intervention keeping the needs of the community at the forefront.

Saajha Manch Mobile Vaani assists dismissed women workers

Behaviour Change Campaign

 Curated and co-created content in the form of relatable audio stories is disseminated within the communities on changing livelihood scenarios and lived experiences witnessed during recent times. This in turn improves sensitivity and understanding of the community towards climate change enabling them to attribute their livelihood transitions to climate change. The content also promotes the knowledge and procedures to secure government schemes and social protection measures, which are designed to build climate resilience. For example, informing community members of livelihood activities such as afforestation, watershed development, and grassland development that classify as MGNREGS livelihoods while also fostering carbon sequestering.

PTS union members protest outside RK Company in Kanchipuram, Chennai, 2019
Community Action

Gram Vaani’s platforms help to amplify the efforts of partner organizations in building solidarity and membership towards collective action, through petitions, press meets, social media campaigns and presence on the street.

 

Our Projects

CoreStack.org

To clearly outline the importance of community-based technologies, and distinguish them from individual service-based technologies, we are conceptualizing our past and ongoing work as a

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APU Report

A research study was undertaken in partnership with The Azim Premji University as part of their Research Funding Programme 2021 to gather data and insights

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Impact From Field

Construction of Ponds

The MV field team organized multiple community meetings in various locations of Jamui, Koderma and Giridih districts to make people aware about the effect of

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Our Partners

“Muni Yadav from Jamui district of Bihar shared that he incurred a loss of 12,000 rupees owing to untimely rain that affected his crops. He reiterated that in recent years this has become very common across families that practice agriculture. Dwindling groundwater coupled with untimely rain, according to him, are contributing to this growing challenge of water scarcity in his village. http://voice.gramvaani.org/fsmedia/recordings/387/5893914.mp3”
“Rupesh Kumar from Tilaiya block of Koderma district, Jharkhand, shared his insights on the need for community actions to mitigate challenges posed by climate change. Communities like his which have forests in vicinity have traditionally been dependent on collecting non-timber forest products for consumption as well as selling. Cropping for such communities added to that as a livelihood. But uncertain and decreased monsoon has affected their livelihoods, leading to illegal and dangerous activities like collecting Mica from mines/ pits. In such a scenario, he suggested action from the government to train communities toward alternative livelihoods as well as sustainable agriculture.”
Our Partners