Sikkim best prepared to tackle Drought, reveals Study

Guwahati: The state of Sikkim is all prepared to tackle any drought situation that may hit the state in future, unlike the states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which is most likely to witness large-scale devastation as their water and ecological systems are ill-prepared to deal with such conditions, reveals a recent study.

In a recent study, the Journal of Hydrology reveals that while all the four districts of Sikkim are resilient to drought, making the state absolutely prepared to tackle the calamity, no district in Rajasthan or Chhattisgarh is tough enough to face a drought.

The study states that Rajasthan is vulnerable to droughts because of its naturally dry conditions and lack of vegetation. But the reasons for Chhattisgarh not being drought-proof is not mentioned in the study.

Resilience is defined as the ability of a system to undergo minimal changes in structure and behaviour under changing conditions. In the current study, drought resilience can be described as the ability of a land area to withstand dry conditions, resulting from decreased precipitation (rainfall, snowfall and hail) and loss of moisture from the top layers of soil, and keep supporting the growth of eco-systems.

Drought resilience in the study is calculated by taking into account the eco-system water use efficiency (WUEe) of different districts and comparing it under dry conditions and its overall mean value. WUEe can be defined as the ratio of the productivity, in terms of vegetation, of the districts to the amount of water lost to the atmosphere through evaporation. The scientists have formulated an index of drought resilience (Rd) which is defined as the ratio of the value of WUEe in the driest year for a district between 2000 and 2014 to its mean value in that period. This index tells how well a district is naturally prepared to fight dry conditions which eventually lead to drought.

The research, conducted by Manish Kumar Goyal at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, and Ashutosh Sharma at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, also found that 62 per cent of districts studied (634) in India were not resilient to drought.

The study which states forest to be better prepared for any drought situations, however, could not establish any direct correlation. Most of the districts with more forest cover showed more resilience and those with more croplands showed less of it. The study identified 75 districts with more than 40 per cent forest area. Among these, more than 50 per cent were capable of coping with a drought. On the other hand, 65 per cent of districts with less than 20 per cent forest area did not seem that prepared.

The study came out with some contrasting facts about the state of Kerala. Despite 30 per cent of the State’s land covered with forests, 81 per cent of the district is not resilient to drought. Similarly, Karnataka’s 83 per cent of districts are not ready to handle the natural calamity. On the other hand, sub-Himalayan states like Punjab have 88 per cent of districts resilient to drought and showed a general high resilience to drought. Haryana (76 per cent), Uttarakhand (75 per cent) and Himachal Pradesh (73 per cent) too have a major number of districts that can tackle the calamity pretty well.

The study also found that temperate climate was a little better suited to deal with aridity as 42 per cent of districts were found to be resilient to drought as compared to tropical (32 per cent) and dry (38 per cent) climatic conditions. One can also observe that in a state like Haryana, which has the least amount of forest cover (3.59 per cent) and is mostly dry, most of the districts (76 per cent) were drought resilient—third highest in the country after Sikkim and Punjab.

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