Climate Change Cell

Climate change is one of the most hotly discussed topics today. While there is considerable discussion and debate on many aspects of climate change especially with respect to agriculture, comparatively little work on livestock and climate change especially in relation to marginal societies has been done.

ANTHRA’s commitment to climate change issues

As an organization ANTHRA is deeply concerned that climate change can have far reaching impacts on the lives of marginalized communities already struggling for livelihoods in the years to come. ANTHRA is therefore committed to using its knowledge, expertise and skills for conducting meaningful research and documentation and the dissemination of important learning’s on adaptation and mitigation strategies to both the marginalized communities of livestock owners we work with as well as to the larger community of scientists and development workers both nationally and internationally. These activities will be taken up under the newly set up Climate Change cell

ANTHRA’s present contribution towards mitigation efforts

Closing the carbon cycle is an important step in mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change. Some of ANTHRA’s work in the past is already a step forward in this direction:

1. Promotion of nurseries, grass lands and forests ensures excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is utilized by growing vegetation.
2. Encouraging and promoting ecological agriculture ensures the recycling of animal waste as well as farm yard waste into the soil thereby returning valuable carbon to the soil.
3. Ecological agricultural practices also prevent build up of animal wastes and thus reduce the possibility of green house gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Ecological agriculture and climate change mitigation

In a broader sense ecological agriculture has the potential to mitigate some of the adverse effects of climate change in the following ways:

1. Recycling carbon to the soil, thereby closing the carbon cycle
2. By returning valuable bio mass to the soil ensuring water retention thereby reducing risks posed by sudden periods of drought
3. By encouraging crops which require less water and thereby reducing the need for fuel and energy driven irrigated systems
4. encouraging locally grow fodder crops which are integrated into farming systems reduces transportation costs as well as aids carbon sequestration
5. Encouraging local breeds of livestock reduces green house gas emission, draft animal power reduced demand on fossil fuels
6. Reduces demand on fossil fuel by not using chemical fertilizer or mechanized farming
7. Local markets reduces transportation costs and thereby carbon foot prints.

Livestock and Bio energy

By using bio energy which is generated from animal waste the methane from animal waste is burnt to provide household domestic energy for rural households. This has multiple benefits. Methane which is 22 times more potent than CO2 is efficiently consumed into useful domestic energy. This in turn implies rural households make less demands on fossil fuel energy as their energy needs get taken care of at the local level. If these energy solutions can be properly designed even the demand for fuel wood could be reduced thereby allowing carbon sequestration in newly planted plantations. The slurry from efficiently designed bio gas plants is recycled into local agriculture thereby enhancing both agriculture and reducing the demand for chemical fertilizer. Encouraging draft animal power also minimizes the need for fossil fuel.

ANTHRA’s work

ANTHRA will work not just on adaptation but towards long term mitigation strategies in the following ways:

Research

1. Continued research and pilot trials on closing the carbon cycle, reducing green house gas emissions and reducing the demands for fossil fuels
2. Ecological agriculture; carefully designing programmes, conducting simple trials, recording and monitoring data and sharing learnings
3. Promoting simple livestock based bio energy programmes
4. Documentation of case studies, interesting projects. Collating and compiling secondary literature and data.
5. Networking with other groups national and international working on similar issues
6. Dissemination through our web page, seminars, workshops and campaigns

Projects under the Climate Change Cell

ANTHRA has received support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) India toward a corpus fund which will enable us as a group to undertake some of the small activities listed above besides this we have support for the following:

1. Indigenous Communities in Andhra Pradesh, India and Climate Change

Supported by International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), UK

Start Date: January 2009

2. Participatory Action-Research Project on “Agro-fuels, Food and Land Sovereignty”

Collaborative project between Anthra, Yakshi, Newcastle University, UK and IIED, UK. For further details see blog http://foodenergynexus.wordpress.com/