Regional Environmental Change, Farmers’ Perceptions and Resilient Farming: Experiences from the Sagar Island of Indian Sundarbans

Abstract

This research analyzed the patterns of agricultural transformations and adjustments to rapid environmental changes in deltaic island ecosystems by considering the case of Sagar Island of Indian Sundarbans using decadal climatic datasets, geospatial information, and farmers’ perceptions. Farmers’ cognition was considered for identifying crops that were suitable for cultivation in the changing environment. Results indicated that the average annual temperature and precipitation in this region had increased notably since 1980. Similarly, surface soil salinity had also recorded an overall increase throughout the island during the last three decades. In such a scenario, local farmers were only able to profitably cultivate few salinity-tolerant varieties of paddy (e.g., Masoori, Kalma, Santoshi, and Pratiksha) and vegetables (e.g., sunflower, potato, onion, okra, and betel leaf). Brackish water aquaculture had also become popular here in spite of its socio-ecological detriments. Many farmers were found to use their traditional knowledge proficiently alongside modern methods. However, the pressure of local peers, lack of readily investable wealth, and appropriate technological expertise often weakened their adaptive capacity. The findings suggested that effective cropping strategies such as coupled mangrove-shrimp farming and cultivation of salinity as well as waterlogging tolerant crop varieties could be considered as viable strategies toward enhancing resilience.

Keywords:

• Adaptation strategies
• climatic changes
• crop suitability
• resilience
• salinity tolerant varieties

Acknowledgements

The authors express their humble gratitude to all the villagers and farmers of the studied villages of Sagar Island who provided assistance and necessary information during the fieldwork and scheduled-based survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author details

DD, RB, and CS conceptualized and designed the research. RB, PKG, and MN performed the perception surveys. Spatial mapping was done by MN and PKG. Statistical analyses were conducted by DD and RB. All authors contributed equally to the interpretation and discussion of the results. DD and RB wrote the first draft and all other authors read, revised, and approved the final manuscript.

Ethical statement

There is no provision of taking approval of a Research Ethics Board in India for people’s feedback-based research. In this study, all the survey respondents were enlightened before conducting the survey regarding the objectives of the research, and their identities were kept confidential.

Data availability statement

Meteorological data of Sagar Island was obtained from well-known open-access websites such as www.worldweatheronline.com and https://globalweather.tamu.edu. Several multispectral satellite images of the Landsat series with 30 m spatial resolution were downloaded from the open-access web portal of https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/, http://www.diva-gis.org/datadown. Apart from these, the other database of the research has been tabulated and provided in processed format within the main text. All data supporting the findings of the study shall be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.