Actualités

Socio-economic Assessment of the Rural Vulnerability of Water Users under Stressors of Global Changes in the Hard Rock Area of South India (SHIVA)

Global climate changes are already affecting water resources around the world and this impact will increase significantly in the near future especially in developing countries. The SHIVA project will be carried out in South India as it represents a water-stressed region where climate change, together with current large-scale and rapid social and economic changes, are likely to affect the region in a significant manner. The project is financed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) of France.

The principal novelties of this project are : (1) the development, comparison and mapping of two vulnerability indicators, one to climate changes and the other to economic changes in order to identify winners and losers ; (2) the social and economic evaluation of rural vulnerability impacts ; and (3) the development of a methodology allowing for realistic water budgeting at the scale of the watershed. The final objective is to determine what could be done now to reduce rural vulnerability and take advantage of global changes.

Case studies will be conducted in watersheds in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh that are representative of both hydrological and socioeconomic dynamics of the hard rocks areas of southern India and of the impact of global changes. These studies will be used to develop hydrologic models allowing for impact simulation. Subsequently, these results at the watershed level will be up-scaled to the appropriate level ? at which socio-economic approaches are carried out. The up-scaling methodology will rely on the integration of remote sensing data within hydrological approaches. Uncertainties, particularly those associated with the up-scaling will be thoroughly evaluated and reflected into the socio-economic approaches, which in turn, will be consistent with the hypotheses made in the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios at the global level.

In view of ensuring methodological robustness, contextual relevance, technical feasibility and development of the approaches and derived tools, the project mobilizes Indian and French partners providing complementary expertise and skills in the domains of climate change, agriculture prospective, social sciences (geography, sociology and economics), GIS, hydrology and hydrogeology. Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières (BRGM), France leads the consortium, in which IFP and CSH are partners, and National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad, Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore are the main Indian partners.

Contact : Dr. Frédéric Borne
Dr. Basudeb Chaudhuri

Western Ghats Forest Biodiversity portal

The Western Ghats Forest Biodiversity portal was recently launched at the official website of the IFP. It is a portal of research applications and databases on forests and trees of the Western Ghats. The information in the portal is the culmination of several biodiversity projects carried out in the Ecology Department of the IFP, under the program “Environment and sustainable development”. The portal has been developed using web mapping technology, open source software tools and shared databases.

The current version of the portal comprises of the following resources : vegetation maps, endemic tree species, tree identification system, agroforestry trees, ecological databases, map archives and publications.

For access to this portal : http://www.ifpindia.org/biodiversityportal/index.php ?lang=en

Contact : Dr. Raphaël Pélissier