Chronicling climate change: Everyday lives, extraordinary stories

Rising temperatures and shrinking water bodies across this region are putting pressure on pastoralists in Jharkhand – among the country’s most climate vulnerable states. At one time the village cheered their arrival, but now their presence goes unnoticed

Despite falling demand for handmade baskets, Krishna Rani has held on to her decades long family craft of making chhaj. However, heatwaves in Punjab’s Fazilka district, throw up new challenges to her work

In Kashmir, cheaper imports and a changing climate is affecting the walnut trade – an annual income that is shrinking

As the main workers on boat cruises in the Sunderbans, women battle a myriad health issues brought on by rising heat in the region

In the village of Khirkhiri, untimely rain is wreaking havoc with the harvest, and even livestock are not spared. A video capturing the voices of farmers across Rajasthan’s Karauli district

The seppa, bair, darki, duyer, diyaar are just some of the indigenous bamboo fishing traps that Jalal Ali crafts for a living. But truant monsoons have shrunk Assam’s many waterbodies, and the demand for fishing traps has fallen sharply, and so has his income

Temperatures are changing in the Nilgiris, it’s warmer and drier now. Farmers from Irula and Soliga Adivasi communities say that changing rainfall patterns make it difficult to farm millets like ragi, cholam and samai

Small farmers who cultivate the famed betel leaf in south Bihar say erratic and extreme weather is playing havoc with their crop. State compensation is negligible. Magahi paan leaf received a Geographical Indicator (GI) in 2017, but cultivators say that it has not helped and their woes remain

In this village in Madhya Pradesh, small betel leaf farmers like Prakash Bundiwaal grow this delicate vine which must withstand hot winds in summer, cold winters and heavy rains and storms. However no state support is given to this crop

Farmers in Bangalore district’s Gadenahalli village are facing many challenges growing pomegranates such as pests, changing climate and low returns

With temperatures climbing in Ladakh, yak herders in the Zanskar valley are finding it difficult and unprofitable to maintain their herd

Fishermen and migrant workers are rescuing the endangered turtle – one egg at a time

In Maharashtra’s Konkan region, farmers are worried about the sharp decline in alphonso mango harvests

In Sri Muktsar Sahib district, the impact of climate change is clear and present: two consecutive rabi crops have been devastated by untimely rains and hailstorms. Both livelihoods and homes have taken a hit

Birds in this biodiversity hotspot are shifting their ranges upslope, signalling serious ecological damage in the eastern Himalayas. Alarmed at the change, local people are actively participating in conservation efforts

Solar and wind energy outfits are steadily encroaching upon Rajasthan’s orans – sacred groves set in grasslands which are mis-categorised as ‘wastelands’ in government records. Their rapidly growing presence is drastically changing the ecology and livelihoods

In AP’s East Godavari district, residents of Uppada village rely on instinct to tell what the sea will claim next. The fast-receding shoreline has altered their livelihoods, social relations and collective memory

India is seeing huge declines in native insect species – several of them tied closely to our food security. But it’s hard to get humans viewing insects with the warmth they reserve for, say, furry mammals

India’s smallest union territory, just 1-2 metres above sea level on average – and where every seventh person is a fisherman – is losing its coral reefs and facing the impact of climate change at multiple levels

Dharma Garel and others in the Adivasi hamlets of Shahapur taluka of Maharashtra may not speak of ‘climate change’, but are daily confronting its effects directly, including erratic rainfall and falling yields

In June 2019, Churu, Rajasthan, recorded a global high of 51°Celsius. For many here though that was just one milestone in an expanding summer and other odd changes in seasons that clearly point to climate change

Effluents and apathy have reduced Delhi's lifeline to a sewer. Thousands of fish die annually while the Yamuna's original custodians have nowhere to go. It all feeds into and spurs a climate crisis

City farmers? Yes, sort of – in the national capital, struggling as a choked Yamuna river and the destruction of its floodplains spur the region’s climate crisis and devastates their livelihoods

Many in Versova Koliwada have a story to tell of dwindling fish – the reasons range from local-level pollution to global-scale warming. Both have combined to bring the impact of climate change to the city’s shores

An unusual activity of the fisherwomen of Bharathinagar in Tamil Nadu keeps them more in the water than on boats. But climate change and overexploitation of marine resources are eroding their livelihoods

This district in Vidarbha, which for long had adequate water resources, is seeing new rainfall patterns. Now listed as a 'climate hotspot', the changes in Bhandara are bringing uncertainty and losses for paddy farmers

A chemical-intensive Bt cotton monoculture is spreading through Odisha’s Rayagada district – harming health, deepening debt, irreversibly eroding indigenous knowledge, and sowing the seeds of a climate crisis

In Rayagada, Bt cotton acreage has risen by 5,200 per cent in 16 years. The result: this biodiversity hotspot, rich in indigenous millets, rice varieties and forest foods, is seeing an alarming ecological shift

Pastoralists from Kachchh walk great distances in search of grazing lands for their sheep in Gujarat, even as pastures disappear or become inaccessible, and climate patterns get ever more erratic

People in the Sundarbans of West Bengal, for long living on the edge, are now facing climate change – recurring cyclones, erratic rain, growing salinity, rising heat, depleting mangroves and more

In the high mountains of the eastern Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh, the nomadic Brokpa community is recognising climate change and devising coping strategies based on traditional knowledge

Villagers in Maharashtra’s Latur district are baffled by the heavy and intense hailstorms in summer that have hit them this past decade. Some farmers are giving up on orchards altogether

Villages in Sangole taluka of Maharashtra’s Solapur district are brimming with stories of how the old cyclical pattern of good rainfall and dry spells has been broken – and why and with what impact

Kadal Osai, a community radio of and for fisherfolk on Pamban island of Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram district, turns three this week. And it's making waves – with climate change as its latest focus

Coffee and pepper farmers in Wayanad, Kerala, are reeling under losses caused by a rise in temperatures and erratic rainfall in a district whose residents once boasted of its ‘air-conditioned climate’

Nomadic Changpa pastoralists at the high grazing grounds of Ladakh find their yak-related economy in a crisis that is driven by major climatic shifts in their fragile mountainous ecosystems

Human-wildlife conflict is escalating in Radhanagari, Kolhapur, where the gaur buffalo are raiding nearby farms. This is spurred by deforestation, cropping changes, drought and fluctuating weather patterns

Crop pattern changes, waning forest cover, an explosion of borewells, the death of a river, and more – have produced dramatic effects on land, air, water, forests and climate in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district