In the 1980s, the arid expanse of South Rajasthan presented a vastly different scene from what we witness today. As a young farmer, my community and I would gather under the expansive canopies of native trees, our natural respite from oppressive heat. The natural world provided not just a backdrop but was a vital, interactive part of our daily lives. We didn’t just exist alongside nature; we thrived within it, using the principles of what we now call sustainable living without even realising it.
Fast forward to this summer, when Northern and Western India was reeling under a severe heatwave, I found myself struggling to sit in an open area, with people huddling under a single tree, desperately seeking respite from the scorching sun. This contrast brings to perspective the profound changes that have occurred in the last forty years.
A disconnect from nature is killing us
Today combating heat means a blind reliance on artificial cooling. A fast-paced urbanised lifestyle has further caused us to forget the value of natural methods of cooling and the value of adaptation. Even the elderly, who once thrived without air conditioning, now find themselves dependent on it to cope with rising temperatures. This shift is not only unsustainable but also contributes to the very problem we are trying to combat – climate change.
In our work, the plight of the Bhil community spread across southern Rajasthan and neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat serves a stark reminder. These guardians of nature, who have lived in harmony with the forests for generations, now bear the disproportionate brunt of climate change. Their ability to adapt to the region’s increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves, droughts, and erratic weather patterns has dwindled, partly due to market-driven lifestyles.
Indigenous wisdom for modern problems
The solution lies not in technology, but in climate-sensitive circular living—practices that respect nature and adapt to climate change. Look at agriculture, our rural backbone. We have abandoned diverse, resilient farming for industrial monoculture, reducing adaptability and increasing vulnerability of many communities. Addressing this requires a fundamental re-evaluation of our agricultural and environmental strategies.
But before proposing viable solutions, we need meticulous landscape mapping: understanding community environments, traditional knowledge systems, and specific vulnerabilities. Fully understanding these dimensions can pinpoint exact strategies to reduce our ecological footprint, and promote lifestyles that minimise electricity consumption and resource use, while drawing on ancient wisdom to enhance our modern lives.
Revive, replicate, and collectively act
Indigenous techniques like natural resource renewal, tree-based farming, traditional mud-and-wood housing, and consuming local, uncultivated foods, can address some aspects of climate change and also bring about a sense of responsibility and connection with nature. Promoting agroforestry and integrating trees into farms can improve biodiversity and soil health. Adopting drought-resistant crops and traditional methods like rainwater harvesting, mulching, and using organic manure is vital for conserving moisture, enhancing soil fertility, and minimising external inputs. Building on these approaches, there is a powerful social dimension that further amplifies their impact.
The strength of community: Reinvigorating Halma for meaningful impact
The Bhil community’s practice of Halma offers a model for harnessing collective action to enhance resilience to climate change. Rooted in a philosophy that respects and conserves nature, for which they see themselves as custodians, community members unite to address environmental challenges and manage local resources. This includes activities like rejuvenating communal water bodies, developing field bunds, cleaning grains, and restoring seeds.
The community takes care of their communal public goods by collaboratively working on each other’s farms during labour-intensive periods of the crop cycle, thereby saving money that would otherwise be spent on market labour. Along with physical labour, Halma also involves open discussions about challenges and collaboratively crafting solutions. Most of all, the practice gives a profound reflection of Swaraj, the lifestyle of minimal dependency.
Truly, indigenous solutions hold immense potential, hence replicating them in similarly impacted areas and even integrating them into urban spaces can be extremely transformative. Blending modern science with this traditional knowledge allows us to create more effective and sustainable strategies to combat climate change. It acknowledges the value of time-tested practices while adapting them to contemporary needs.
Aligning policy with tradition for a climate-resilient future
Policymakers play a critical role in enhancing solutions that embrace climate-sensitive, circular lifestyles, crucial for adapting to climate change impacts. Education, market, and agricultural policies should better align with local cultures and traditional practices, supporting the preservation of indigenous knowledge and practices through social security schemes and entitlements. Integrating climate-sensitive approaches into policy frameworks can create a more holistic and effective response to the climate-related hazards across the country.
Ground-level experiences highlight the urgency of adopting these lifestyles. By learning from the wisdom of indigenous communities like the Bhils and combining it with advanced scientific methods, we can create community-driven solutions that tackle both the root causes and effects of climate change.
Despite the challenges ahead, reconnecting with ancestral knowledge will empower us to navigate this crisis, emerging more resilient and closely connected to the natural world that sustains us.
Jayesh Joshi is secretary of Vaagdhara, which is also a ClimateRISE Alliance member organisation. ClimateRISE Alliance is a collaborative platform that aims to shape an India view, a common vocabulary and enable a multi-stakeholder engagement approach on intersectional climate action in India for the most vulnerable communities.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.