As climate change hits vulnerable communities, TN strengthens rural resilience

New Indian Express

02-05-2025

In a hilly village of Yercaud (Kovilur), tribal populations that have been poaching endangered wildlife like pangolins are expected to stop, as new income sources are being created. In Cuddalore district, marginalised communities are being sensitised on various aspects of waste collection to enable their inclusion in the sustainable labour market. In the fishing villages of Nagapattinam and Yercaud, non-working women would be trained in sustainable small businesses, and farmer-producer organisations would be encouraged to take up organic farming.
These are some of the initiatives undertaken by the Tamil Nadu government under its flagship programme on Climate Resilient Villages (CRV) — an initiative that addresses climate change and its impacts from the perspective of the communities directly affected by it.
The need of the hour
Vulnerability to climate impacts is on the rise and different regions face varying intensities of impacts both in terms of the slow onset and extreme events. The Tamil Nadu government's vision to build a climate resilient future has led to the setting up of the Green Tamil Nadu Mission, Climate Change Mission, Wetlands Mission, the Coastal Mission, and the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company (TNGCC). As part of this endeavour the government launched its flagship programme, Climate Resilient Villages (CRV) in 2022-23. It spans across 11 districts (3 clusters) of the state and is one of the first initiatives to address and integrate grassroots-level vulnerability into climate centric development plans.
Development, climate change challenge
The coastal clusters face a variety of climate induced challenges like increase in salinity, depletion of marine resources, lack of potable water, unequitable access, limited access to lucrative market and malnutrition.
Hill cluster sites are prone to very low surface and groundwater recharge, droughts, soil erosion, landslides, lack of consistent power supply, inadequate empowerment of local collective mechanisms like self-help group coverage and access to markets (due to remote terrains), biodiversity loss, lack of livelihoods, and human-animal conflicts.
Coastal sites that are tourism-oriented and part of delta regions, are prone to acute waste management issues, especially the plastic menace, air and water pollution, drought and flood proneness, inadequate potable water. The lack of development also exacerbates the limited ability of local communities to manage climate risks. This highlights the imperative that sustainable development can lead to better climate risk management.
Pathways to building resilience
In Killai (Pichavaram) and Muthupet (Thiruvarur), which are flood and cyclone-prone areas, the project includes using physical infrastructure like ecoblocs that help in draining flood waters, percolation, and harvesting as well as groundwater recharge.
As for Killai and Kovilur, which have potential due to being close to mangroves or forests, the programme aims to conserve biodiversity and native wildlife (through turtle hatcheries, pangolins) by sensitising and empowering local tribal communities.
Another example of such interventions is stabilisation of sand dunes around the Ramakrishnapuram village (Rameshwaram) which helps in conserving the natural habitat, creating water catchments, benefitting soil nutrient content, thereby indirectly in the medium-term, contributing to local livelihoods.
The programme also focuses in Hogenakkal, Rameshwaram and Pichavaram, on promoting sustainable tourism, focusing on eco-friendly businesses, solar cooktops, using local agricultural residue for small businesses run by communities, testing solar e-boats for mangrove tours to reduce both air and water pollution.
The programme will include creating waste segregation infrastructure through bins, backyard composting, individual biogas systems, and leverage on existing initiatives of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) by installing plastic buy-back and Manjappai machines, ghost net buyback, etc.
Village and town panchayats are overburdened by high energy costs and fluctuations. The programme will also install solar panels (in all its public buildings which include primary health centres, anganwadis, cyclone shelters), street lights, solar parks, providing solar driers, and cold storage facilities to reduce the operational cost of local fishing communities and enhance their value chains more sustainably.
The CRV programme has attempted to create a first-of-its-kind detailed project report (DPR) at the village/hamlet level. The DPRs provide a robust assessment of both social and physical infrastructure at the local level, based on climate risk information, socio-economic vulnerability contexts, geo-spatial mapping, drone survey images, soil and water survey-based interventions with an estimate of costs for proposed interventions.
Convergence model
The programme is shaped by several consultations with the district administration to get their inputs on the interventions, validation of the proposed interventions and possible financing mechanisms for implementation. Since village panchayats don't have their own source revenue stream, the programme also looks at innovative approaches to accessing finance for the proposed interventions across each site.
Integrating resilience building with grassroots-level development
Since resilience actions are often incremental to developmental actions, systematically planning overlay them with ongoing schemes. It becomes more complex since resilience building is often a moving target as a region's vulnerability is fast changing due to climate change. This requires a comprehensive understanding of local vulnerability, needs, aspirations, and technical capacity to implement such actions at the ground level.
This programme aims to sensitise both local communities and grassroots level administrations on the contextual approaches to resilient development. In the race against combating climate change, inclusive resilient development is key to
ensuring that the most marginalised do not get left behind. This programme aims to pilot-test such models so that they can be internalised and scaled up in all vulnerable regions and eventually get mainstreamed with the fundamental plans of rural development. The challenge ahead lies in creating systemic change in development planning and institutionalising them within the Panchayati Raj or Rural Development plans and approaches.
Ensuring equitable resilient development in Tamil Nadu while protecting nature is the way forward.
(Authors: Supriya Sahu is IAS, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Environment, Climate Change & Forests; while Vivek Venkatramani is Associate Program Director, Climate Resilience Practice – WRI India)