12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow - Earth Science India

National Conference on Science of Climate Change and Earth’s Sustainability: Issues and Challenges ‘A Scientist-People Partnership’
12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow
natural resources (IPCC, 2007; World Bank, 2008 & Douglas, 2009). These
marginalized isolated highland communities are going to face the climatic stress
because they largely dependent on climate-sensitive sectors, such as rain-fed
agriculture; its fragile mountain ecosystems and dramatic topography make the country
prone to natural hazards. These changes will create tremendous stress and shocks to
highland communities by declining agricultural productivity with increasing problem of
food security in mountainous region. The variability of climate is a complex problem
without clear scientific and political solutions. The mounting threats of runaway climate
change topics are very much on public, political and scientific agenda with major
political, economic, socio-cultural, psychological, and ethical implications, which must
be understood by the policy makers and wider society in order to respond effectively.
The paper presents an empirical analysis to examine the key determinants and
dimensions of public awareness of, response to climate change. This study use mixed
methodology approach to explore a variety of potentially salient influences on
perception of and behavioural response to climate change. The required data and basic
information of rural household and communities of highlands related to impact climate
change and indigenous adaptations were collected from direct questionnaire based
primary field study and physical survey based on the results of 140 respondents in
highland villages of Sikkim. To ensure well-distributed representation, the selection of
samples from the study area was done by a simple random sampling and on the basis of
their economic categories: namely, rich, middle class and poor via wealth ranking
assessment. Stratified random sampling was applied to select the household in the study
villages. PRA method was applied to gather information on perception and awareness
of climate change, vulnerability induced by climate change and adaptation measures of
local mountain communities to minimize such impacts. Focused Group Discussion
(FGD) was applied to understand the perceptions, attitudes and practices. Data analysis
comprises of complementary qualitative and quantitative techniques, comparing
statistical patterns in the data using SPSS. The head of households who receive formal
education, having media access, personal or family experiences of different form of
hazards are more concerned group and are more likely to develop proper environmental
attitudes. Though most of the people are having pro environmental attitude, at the same
time they are less willing to make much financial sacrifices for the sake of environment.
The main barrier of highland rural households response to adverse environmental
challenge in the past were lack of awareness/information, financial constraints, lack of
institutional supports. The public policies and investment strategies must support
education, markets, credit and information about crafting adaptation strategies to
climate change, including technological and institutional methods, particularly for poor
highland households in highlands of different country in South Asia.
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