On its 11th anniversary today, December 2, Gaon Connection has released a book titled Climate Connection Report 2023 that documents 75 stories of climate change from rural India.
Climate Connection Report 2023 brings together Gaon Connection’s extensive reportage on climate change this year in the form of a free-to-download book so that policy makers, researchers, and citizens can join the dots and see a pattern emerging in the scattered stories of the changing environment.
This book, available on Gaon Connection’s website — www.gaonconnection.com, brings rural India to the front and centre of climate change conversations, policies and response.
Along with the release of the book, Gaon Connection also launches its long term project — Climate Connection — where climate science meets ancient wisdom. As part of this, Gaon Connection will regularly document stories of how the traditional wisdom of communities can help respond to the challenges posed by climate change.
Talking about Climate Connection Report 2023, Neelesh Misra, Founder of Gaon Connection, said, “My daughter Vaidehi is eight years old. As all of us know, when we become parents, our worldview changes. And as parents we often wonder what the life of our children will be, when they grow up. And, what will happen when temperatures rise, sea levels inch up, and climatic patterns are changing dangerously.”
“So this book is not just a piece of academic work, it is also personal and it should be personal for every parent who is living in an era in which climate change will impact the world of our children, and the children of hundreds of millions of other fellow humans,” he said.
Climate Connection Report 2023 comes at a time when the world’s most important meet to address climate change — COP 28 (The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC) — is underway in Dubai, UAE till December 12, 2023.
About the Climate Connection Report 2023
The Climate Connection Report does not just set out the problems of climate change, but also has a section dedicated to stories that spell out solutions. These reports document how people in rural India are circumnavigating climate related changes.
“Every now and then we read stories of how rainfall has led to crop destruction, or droughts have fuelled migration but this is possibly the first time a book puts together an entire year of climate change impact,” said Misra.
According to Nidhi Jamwal, Managing Editor of Gaon Connection, climate change is much more than an environmental issue; it is a global human rights issue.
“2023 has been a year like never before. It is on track to be the hottest year ever on record. And that means it is also a year of record human suffering,” said Jamwal.
Gaon Connection is India’s biggest rural communication and insights platform. It has its ear firmly to the ground and through its network of reporters and community journalists across 470 districts in the country, has reported on issues of climate change almost every other day.
It is the voice of rural India where two-thirds of the citizens of the country live, away from the media spotlight, suffering the impacts of a changing climate. They have faced crop losses, wage losses, and escalating health problems, due to rising temperatures, erratic monsoons and recurring floods.
“These are concerns that should trouble us all no matter where we live as rural India is also the food bowl of the world. What reaches your plate in a fine dining restaurant in Gurugram or Mumbai is the result of a toiling farmer who worked hard in her or his field tending crops for months till it was ready for harvest,” said Jamwal.
The book is divided into six sections, with one section dedicated solely to Solutions Stories. We believe in the strong human will that responds to the challenge of the century, she concluded.
The Climate Connection Report 2023 is available for a free download, on Gaon Connection’s website www.gaonconnection.com
Other Publications by Gaon Connection
The Gaon Connection Insights vertical regularly brings out open source publications that provide insights into rural India.
On September 5 this year, on Teacher’s Day, Gaon Connection released a free-to-download book on 100 Tales of Teachers Transforming Education in Rural India. This book can be downloaded here.
Last year on December 2, when Gaon Connection turned 10, it released a unique compendium of stories of rural women. Titled 50 Success Stories of Rural Women in The Pandemic, it has stories of extraordinary courage, grit and determination of women in rural India who stood up to the pandemic. The e-book can be downloaded here.
Gaon Connection Insights also releases an annual publication — The State of Rural India Report — which summarises the key developments and events in rural India in a particular year.
In addition to these reports and books, Gaon Connection Insights has conducted three face-to-face rural surveys across India during the pandemic and published three exhaustive reports on survey findings. These rural survey reports can also be downloaded for free at https://www.gaonconnection.com/surveys-reports
Gaon Connection is running two long term projects — Teacher Connection, and The ChangeMakers Project.
Across India, hundreds of thousands of teachers have made small and big sacrifices, and make small and big contributions — some visible, most invisible — to their schools and their students every day. These contributions shape lives, but they are never documented. Gaon Connection’s “Teacher Connection” grows out of this eagerness, this hunger, to celebrate teachers every day — not just on Teachers Day.
Using Gaon Connection’s biggest strength, our community resource persons spread out in 470 districts of the country, we are meeting teachers in some of the remotest locations in the country — from a village in Kargil, a tribal hamlet in Nagaland, an adivasi village in a tiger reserve of Panna in Madhya Pradesh — and documenting their stories in text, video and audio formats.
As part of the Teacher Connection project, it also released a monthly magazine — Teacher Connection — in Hindi and English languages which are available for a free download from Gaon Connection’s website.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to recognise and celebrate individuals and institutions that have brought about a positive change in the society and impacted a large number of lives, Gaon Connection has launched ‘The Changemakers Project’.
This unique long term project aims to build a one-of-its-kind National Registry of Changemakers in the country. From social workers, teachers, environmentalists, farmers, artists, to individuals whose work has transformed lives will be featured as part of The Changemakers Project.
There are hundreds of thousand people out there — the doers — whose life mission is to help others. And they often work under extreme circumstances with bare minimum resources — financial or material. Then, there is another set of people — the helpers — who have the resources and wish to help the doers but do not know how to reach them, or how to verify the impact of their work before supporting them.
The National Registry of Changemakers, which will be built as part of this project, will act as a bridge between the doers and the helpers, and connect the both. This is possibly the first time any such national registry of changemakers is being created in the country.
