: Climate change is already forcing farmers in Uttarakhand to migrate #IndiaNEWS Climate change in Uttarakhand will increasingly force people to abandon farming at high altitudes and move to the plains

Climate change is already forcing farmers in Uttarakhand to migrate #IndiaNEWS
Climate change in Uttarakhand will increasingly force people to abandon farming at high altitudes and move to the plains over the next 30 years. A new study on the state in the middle of the Himalayan range by the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi has forecast the worst impacts will be in higher elevations. This may accelerate the trend of people migrating and leaving land fallow.Uttarakhand, which covers an area bigger than Costa Rica, may be 1.6 degrees Celsius-1.9 degrees Celsius warmer by 2050. Its residents are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, such as changing temperatures, upward-moving snowlines, receding glaciers, erratic rainfall, reduction of snow in winter, changed cropping seasons, shifting cultivation zones for certain crops, and drying up of perennial streams, as pointed out in the state government’s action plan on climate change.The majority of people in Uttarakhand live in rural areas and 71% depend on rainfed agriculture, practised through terrace farming on hill slopes.The TERI-PIK study found that districts at higher elevations, including Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pithoragarh, are warming fastest. Saurabh Bhardwaj, a climate scientist at TERI and a co-author of the study, said: “Our analysis projects that the state’s average annual maximum temperature is...Read more

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