Addressing Climate Change Impacts Through Community-Level Water Management. Case Studies from the South-Eastern Coastal Region of India

With regional variations, climate change has significant direct and indirect impacts on the water sector in coastal south-east India. In most cases, it is a combination of changes in different climate signals such as temperature and precipitation as well as non-climatic factors that exacerbate water-related problems for rural communities. This article presents an assessment of these climate change impacts. Overall, the data from 18 villages show how climate change affects the most basic needs of vulnerable coastal communities, namely water, occupation and health. For the water sector, the major climate-related problems can be prioritised as growing water scarcity, decrease in water quality and the risk of increased floods. Thus, adapting water management measures to climate change is one of the major challenges for rural development. Therefore, the article presents a methodology to address these impacts through participative community-level water management measures.