Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change among the Farming Community of the Indian Sundarbans

Abstract

Climate change is a world-wide event. The climate change of Indian Sundarbans reveal the changes in air temperature, surface water temperature, rainfall and monsoonal pattern, salinity regimes, cyclonic storms and depressions, sea level rise, erosion and accretion. To cope up with the adverse impact of climate change, farmers made adjustment in their farming practices. The present study was designed to determine the differential level of adoption of the prelisted adaptation strategies to climate change. A total 120 farmers who were growing crops, rearing livestock as well as involve in fish farming, simultaneously were selected from 5 blocks of the Indian Sundarbans. For assessing differential level of adoption, Cumulative square root frequency method was used to categories households into three categories namely lower level of adoption (low); medium level of adoption (medium); and higher level of adoption (high).The level of adoption of the adaptation strategy was measured under four components namely, crop cultivation, livestock rearing, fish farming and other farming activities. It was found that majority of the respondents had high level of adoption in crop cultivation practices, medium level of adoption for livestock rearing and other farm practices, while, they had low level of adoption in fish farming.