Communication for Climate Change and Development: Roadmap to Build Climate Resilient Communities

Climate change scenario has become serious over the past few years. Erratic patterns of the weather, rising sea levels and melting glaciers are becoming common over the years. Climate change has to be recognised as the greatest challenge faced by nations. Development Communication has gained popularity in the recent past and has a crucial role to play in understanding the awareness of the people and how awareness impacts action. Understanding how the meaning of climate change is perceived is as important as the social constitution of actions dealing with climate change. Research has shown that exposure to media has corresponded with an increase in awareness about climate change, however, this increase has not necessarily led to citizen-based adaptation and mitigation strategies. Gram Panchayat is the grassroot institution which acts as a cabinet of the village. The democratically elected members of the Panchayat have a good command and influence on the community people. Academic institutions have long been working for and with the Gram Panchayats for various development initiatives in the rural areas. But the approach has to trickle down and move from a philanthropic one to a systematised sustainable one. Using the Government plans and policies to build village level change agents for climate change through concentrated efforts requires a multi-dimensional participation that can facilitate human centred approach to development. Solutions to climate change adaptation will not come from one actor or several actors alone, it needs a robust, systematised action-oriented approach which has multiple players and a participatory approach. This can be made possible by the means of tools of development communication to support the exchange of knowledge and ideas upon climate change adaptation and mitigation practices. This has in turn helped in building a cadre of change agents at the rural community level who are ensuring that communities adopt sustainable practices to reverse the effects of climate change. Bringing together these considerations, this chapter highlights the efforts which trickle across, down and upwards to identify climate change perceptions, adaptation and mitigation practices vis-à-vis some solutions that can help in reduction of the climate change effect. The larger picture, however is about building capacities of the local level formal and informal leaders to act as catalysers for change at their local communities to raise awareness and support action.