Ecological or ecocentric thinking emerges from our appreciation of oneness with nature.
Nature has
its precise mechanism of constant renewal and replenishment of materials, operating in a cyclical
manner. When we humans thought that we have gained mastery over technology, we started
interfering with the cycles of nature. Eventually, we damaged them to that extent that we have
made them go berserk and turn linear. Consequently, we are currently facing stunning problems,
such as pollution and other similar displeasing developments on Earth. . Sustainable development is
not about giving priority to environmental concerns, but it is about incorporating environmental
strengths into the economic system. Sustainability represents ideas of stability, equilibrium, and
harmony with nature. Sustainable development is an attempt to reduce the politics in decision-
making by artificially replacing conflict with consensus. Ecological thinking and its derivative
ecological agriculture are practices that spin around simplicity and modesty. Aggressive dollar-
driven thinking has no place in ecological thinking. Climate change, for example, is a problem created
by us humans because of our badly thought-out and hasty practices of land use. owever,
contemporary agricultural practice has somewhat understood the roles of climate and market.
Developed nations use natural sciences to predict the shortand long-term climate behaviour. They
apply management science to predict and understand market in both shorter and longer terms. The
guarantee of these predications is, of course, debatable. Nevertheless, achieving greater clarity in
these enterprises has empowered developed nations to perform better, given that the other
variables in the agricultural enterprise had already been brought under human control. Thus we
humans have learnt to fit agriculture into human context. We are fully convinced that the science of
agriculture and the business of agriculture need to go hand in hand to achieve better results in
production and profitability. Developed nations focused on extensive cropping practice, whereas a
majority of developing nations resorted to intensive cropping practice. Developed nations, because
of their innate economic capability, attempted producing more and more by employing new science
and novel technology (e.g. use of combines, mechanical sowers, harvesters). The developing nations,
on the other hand, invariably, use the massive human-power base available to them at low cost and
therefore use less-efficient, or sometimes even obsolete, technology.
The human-induced greenhouse effect violates ecological sustainability because it is causing changes
within several decades in the climate system whose natural changes of similar magnitude would
require several millennia or more. Similarly, soils which took thousands of years to build up are being
lost in a few decades. The concept of ecological sustainability needs to be applied on the spatial
scales of the whole planet, continents, individual countries, and even at the scales of ecosystems
such as biological regions tapering down to far smaller natural reserves. Our modern understanding
of the economic concept of sustainability relies heavily on the Hartwick model (Common 1995). The
Hartwick model proposes that if a given, constant population consumes a non-renewable energy for
which a human-made substitute exists, then economic sustainability can be achieved if the profits of
this consumption are invested. However, this model only works under several restrictive
assumptions, and many of them have not been tested yet. More research is necessary to produce a
practical and implementable version of economic sustainability.
Human effort, at least in the last two centuries, has been concentrating narrowly on maximizing the
value of one target variable, such as crop yield, by manipulating a certain combination of variables
present in the ecosystem. This effort has led to the partial destruction or total collapse of numerous
ecosystems. It is impossible to control all the feedback loops. The environment is inherently
unknowable and continuously changing. It cannot be suppressed to serve a limited goal. Hence an
adaptive management strategy would be in order. The adaptive management strategy depends on
flexible, diverse, and redundant regulation, monitoring for responsiveness, and experimental
probing to appreciate and practise ‘new’ ways of perceiving the environment (Holling 1995). What
will be the characteristics of a general adoption of ecological agriculture? • Farmers will recognize—
that is understand and embrace—the idea of the farm as an ecosystem in itself and an integral
component of the natural ecosystem. • This simple, powerful proposition creates the thirst for a
fuller understanding of the mystery of the living system of the farm. Farmers will seek to better
understand and respect the role and functions of watersheds, biomes and biotopes, and landscapes,
concepts that help explain the workings of the natural ecosystem, and factors that are part of the
challenge of managing the farm ecosystem. • As farmers reach a more complete understanding of
the farm ecosystem, they will become progressively more critical of their current practices. They will
seek ways to minimize external inputs to improve productivity. Instead, they will seek to maximize
the natural capacity of the farm ecosystem to work in harmony with the vitality and fecundity of
natur.
Climate change is a threat to both human and natural systems. The world has come to realise this a
few decades ago, with the scientific evidence shared by WMO. Though the global climate policy is
predominantly shaped by the scientific pieces of evidence, there have been implicit gaps in the
policies. The UNFCC plays a significant role in facilitating the negotiated agreements that set the
tenor of international climate policies. Scientific bodies like IPCC and WMO provide the scientific
base to make informed decisions.
The main objective of this study was to identify climate change vulnerable watersheds and sub-
watersheds along with the villages falling under the selected study area. This was done in order to
attain knowledge and understanding on the contributing factors of vulnerability and to prioritize the
area which needs immediate action for the agro-based households of the region. The findings of the
study are based on the LVI–IPCC approach, which reveals that Ur watershed is the most vulnerable
out of the four watersheds. The difference in the vulnerability arises because of differences in the
watershed’s sensitivity, adaptive capacity and exposure to disaster and climate change. The agro-
based households of the region are majorly exposed to extreme climate change, rising temperature
and decreasing rainfall leading to occurrence of successive droughts. Some of the other reasons
leading to high vulnerability of the regions are dependence on rain-fed agriculture which is highly
sensitive to climate change, increasing pressure on natural resources, acute water shortage, over-
extraction of groundwater, lack of infrastructure facilities, extreme poverty and high-scale migration
from villages to towns. Based on the vulnerability assessment, the findings and the suggested
adaptive strategies would enable the villagers of Bundelkhand to better adapt to the impacts of the
climate change and enable government and local bodies to develop programmes and take initiatives
to strengthen the most vulnerable villages
