Shifting Climates, Shifting Crops: Examining the Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture in Ladakh, India.

Kacho Khan, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Aparajita Chattopadhyay, International Institute for Population Sciences, India
Arup Jana, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The present study investigates the climate change awareness and its observed effect on agriculture in the Suru valley region of the Ladakh. The region has over more 90 % of indigenous inhabitants that directly rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Due to less number of weather monitoring stations in the region, it is difficult to get daily weather data for the region. In such a scarce climate data region, the ERA5 data was used as an alternative to understanding the annual temperature and precipitation trends. Further, the study explored the perceived climate change and its impacts by collecting data from 270 households and a few in-depth interviews. An increasing trend of temperature and decreasing trend of precipitation was observed. We found that most people perceived climatic changes like less snowfall, less rainfall, high temperature, erratic rainfall, and erratic snowfall in the region, which significantly impacted staple crop production such as barley, buckwheat and wheat. However, a gender difference was observed in the perception of climate change. To cope with climate change, people changed their cropping patterns, used pesticides and chemical fertilizers to increase production, and shifted their profession from agriculture to income-based jobs.

Keywords: Population, Environment, and Climate Change, The Demography of Indigenous Populations, Remote sensing, Population and Development

See paper.