ActionAid launches “On the brink? A report on Climate Change and its Impact on Kashmir”

Venue: Hotel Ahdoos, Residency Road, Srinagar

Date: 24 September 2007

Time: 11: 30 am

ActionAid launches “On the brink? A report on Climate Change and its Impact on Kashmir” in Srinagar. The report – the first on the issue in the State – comes after a year-long survey.

In the course of its work in Kashmir over the last few years – mainly in the remote areas – ActionAid has been perceiving marked changes in both the natural environment and the farm practices, which are slowly influencing the socio-economic fabric of Kashmir's countryside. Sensing certain links of these changes with the global phenomenon of climate change we set out to look into the possible factors that were causing these changes in Kashmir. At the start we did not assume that these changes were a direct consequence of the climate change phenomenon. Instead, we sought to rely on people's understanding of the factors that were triggering these changes in the first place.

Information for the study was collected from eight districts between October 2006 and July 2007 through interviews with 571 individuals by ActionAid's 91 local team members, who were also supported in a few areas by nine interns from Kashmir University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; Delhi School of Social Work; Aligarh Muslim University and McGill University, Canada in 61 villages of the districts of Anantnag (Islamabad), Kulgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Ganderbal, Srinagar, Budgam, Kupwara, Bandipora and Baramulla. The issues that have been looked into in this study are the change patterns in water availability, crop cultivation, glacier size, snowfall, rainfall, floods and the impact of all these on the livelihoods of people living in Kashmir.

Venue: Hotel Ahdoos, Residency Road, Srinagar

Date: 24 September 2007

Time: 11: 30 am

Please click here to download the report.