Climate adaptation: What worked and what did not. A 200-year record from 18th and 19th century British Administrative documents pertaining to semi-arid regions of peninsular India

Abstract:

Semi-arid tracts in the rain-shadow regions of the peninsular India, characterized by year-to-year variations in rainfall – stretching from Maharashtra in the west to Tamil Nadu in the south – are at an elevated risk from 21^st century climate change, especially from the increased occurrence of droughts and floods. Here we present new data, pertaining impacts and adaptive strategies in relation to climate disasters arising from rain failures, from a review of 50 volumes of archival institutional documents from the British Colonial Period pertaining to administration of districts of peninsular India. The documents span ~ 200 years (1729-1947 AD) and encompass the two phases of the British colonial period, the Company period (1757-1858 AD) and the Crown period (1858 onwards) respectively, which also, climatologically, is a period known for increased incidences of climate disasters–the Little Ice Age (LIA), a one-degree global cooling event that had put enormous pressure on existing infrastructures across the world and also in Colonial India.

We found archival institutional documents to be excellent archives for studying the effects of these disasters and assessing the efficacy of adaptive strategies and policies at local scales, often at the level of districts. Vivid accounts describe impacts of climate disasters precipitated due to rain failures e.g. crop failure, price hike, farmer migration, riot, starvation, epidemic and death were common sequence of events following rain failures (that were 14% or more than long-term average). Furthermore, we find that prioritizing cash crop production over food crop production, lack of alternate employment combined for the farmers, with a free market policy and not halting export of grains during periods of food scarcity lowered resilience of these regions. Thus, despite existence of protective infrastructures, famines, arising from rain failures, continued to occur every 5-10 years, consistent with decadal and sub-decadal modes of rainfall variability. Famines did not occur in this region after 1900, despite rain failures, after the Crown administration undertook large-scale measures (both infrastructural and institutional policies) after two major famines (1876, 1899) that improved access to food, water and medical resources.