Perception of Farmers Regarding Climate Change: A Comparative Study of Hisar and Shimla

Abstract

The term climate stands for general weather conditions prevailing over a period of many years, while climate change refers to significant variation in average weather conditions during a long time period that may be several decades or more. Agriculture is the major source of livelihood for almost 60% of the India's total population. Its different regions are highly vulnerable to various natural disasters like avalanches, earthquakes, floods, drought etc. stressors of water resources” [1]. The present comparative study was conducted in the purposively selected Haryana state and Himachal Pradesh state. One district from each state i.e., Hisar from Haryana and Shimla from Himachal Pradesh were selected at random. A total sample of 240 farm families, 40 from each village (total six village, 1 village from each block) was selected purposively comprising of 120 farm families of Hisar district and 120 of Shimla district. The result was analysed by the statistical tools viz., frequency, percentage, weighted mean score, spearman;s rank correlation and mean. Result showed that in both Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, maximum respondents were familiar about the term climate change but they were unaware about many related terms. Result also elucidated that increasing population and food and water scarcity were perceived most important threat in Haryana and economic situation and unemployment & poverty, food and water scarcity were most important threats perceived in Himachal Pradesh and in Haryana maximum changes were noticed in terms of extreme heat and cold and pattern of rainfall whereas, in Himachal Pradesh maximum changes were observed in pattern of rainfall and season shift. Result also observed that in Haryana most important problem caused by global warming included heat waves which ranked first followed by lesser rainfall and water shortage ranked second and third respectively while in Himachal Pradesh most important problems included lesser snow with ranked first followed by lesser rainfall (rank II) and reduced lake ice cover (rank III).