Bridging Vulnerability and Sustainability: Collective Climate Change Adaptation Efforts by Indian Communities and Businesses

In developing countries like India climate change poses a huge threat, as the dependence of natural resources for survival is quite high. In this chapter, we examine the inter-connectedness of climate change and poverty targeting bottom-of-the-pyramid communities. These communities are often required to deal with both natural dangers as well as limited availability of resources making their life severely difficult. The chapter further evaluates numerous coping strategies, including technological solutions, agricultural innovations, and migration, changing cropping patterns, borrowing and financial support, livestock management, utilizing natural resources as a coping mechanism. Additionally, the chapter highlights the correlation between gender and climate change. It discusses the difficult experiences of women and the specific challenges they face caused by climate change and highlights how they struggle more than men in managing changing environmental conditions. Furthermore, the study puts forward some significant gender-based coping mechanisms for battling climate change that can uplift women and reduce their vulnerability including providing them education, promoting gender equality, infrastructure development, giving them resources and property rights and more. Lastly, the chapter focuses on the role of business organizations in managing climate change and further sheds light on how they gain resilience by indulging in sustainable practices and technology. Consequently, highlighting the social and financial challenges businesses face when adopting climate-friendly procedures due to the possibility of unwanted outcomes caused by extensive interventions. Thus, by examining the joint effort of Indian companies and communities in response to climate change this chapter underscores the importance of integrated, multi-stakeholder approaches to building climate resilience.