Accepted Panels

Climate resilient approach of development is the need of the hour as far as the tribal life of the Indian Himalayan region is concern. Tribal livelihoods primarily depend on natural resource based activities with a focus on agriculture and allied activities. These activities are mostly climate dependent and are facing the curse of climate change as they are more vulnerable to climate induced uncertainties, risks and shocks. The tribal communities of Indian Himalayan regions are the worst sufferers. They have the least options to widen livelihood opportunities to cope up with the impacts of changing climate and extreme climate struggles. Consequently the food, nutrition and income security of the marginalized and impoverished tribal communities are threatened further. This paper is an attempt to delineate the impacts of extreme climate struggles and environmental degradation among the forest Rabha society of North Bengal who belongs to Bodo section and inhabits in the foothills of Indo-Bhutan border. Rabha are in stage of transition between matriliny to patriliny. They mostly depend on forest and forest based livelihoods but over the period of time, these days forest Rabha faces a lot of struggles with the change of climate and its worst effect on their livelihood and environment. This paper is trying to explore the local knowledge and worldviews in preserving their age-old livelihood opportunities and is also advocating for climate resilient development for such communities like Rabha. Climate resilient development mentions about the ability of people to withstand, adapt to, and recover climate induced stress and risks and sustain and improve their livelihood opportunities. This paper is based on field work and empirical experiences of the researchers and at the same time secondary sources have also been incorporated to strengthen our findings.