Mapping changes in indigenous pastoral ecology in West India: Impact evaluation of climate change and socio-economic changes using participatory mapping and geographical information system

Abstract:

The district of Kutch in the western Indian state of Gujarat, has both arid and sub-tropical climatic zones. The ecosystems in Kutch has rich diversity, with mangrove forests along the coastline, sub-tropical grasslands and wood lands. While the region is still rural in its character and the traditional pastoralist communities far from the city culture, but post 2001 Gujarat earthquake, industrial zones have come up along the coastline. The Maldharis, local tribes have been the perpetual torch bearers of pastoralism in Kutch. Although there are diverse castes and communities within the Maldharis, livestock rearing specially camels and dairy farming have been the traditional livelihood of the Maldharis. The livelihood of the Maldharis are dependent on the ecosystem services for both subsistence and as a source of income. The impact of the natural hazard events like earthquakes and cyclones are more pronounced on the fragile ecosystem especially to the mangrove forest.

In this study, we are trying to clarify how natural hazards and climate change influences the socio-cultural and economic wellbeing and societal transformation and sustainability of the Maldharis. Considering, the Maldharis are repository of local knowledge, one of the approaches of the study is to co-produce knowledge by engaging with the local community through participatory mapping integrated with modern Remote sensing (RS) and GIS technology. Participatory mapping is a sociological method of rediscovering the community's traditional knowledge by collaboratively creating thematic maps. By combining this with the ecological geographic information obtained by remote sensing, we will see how the perception of their natural assets are formed, and what kind of agreement and disagreement with the actual situation of natural assets can be revealed not only in regional but also the micro scale changes. In this paper, we describe the long-term variability in distribution and biomass of the mangrove forests, which are utilized by the pastoral communities by remote sensing data (Landsat TM). We show how the information on the disturbance of mangrove forests caused by large-scale hydrometeorological and geophysical events obtained from the local people's narrative agrees/disagrees with the objective information obtained from the remote sensing data.