Abstract
Home garden is a complex multi-functional land use system that combines multiple farming components of the homestead and provides environmental services, household needs, and employment and income generation opportunities to the households. Predicted climate changes have serious implications for crop and livestock yields particularly in tropical regions. Home garden may act as a cushion to the adverse climate shocks. There is dearth of in-depth study of home garden ecosystem in India. The authors have selected 100 households in Garhbeta-1 block, which is in the dry zone in the district of Paschim Medinipur in West Bengal, India for the study. The main objectives of the chapter include (1) identification of the key characteristics of the home garden, (2) assessing biodiversity in home gardens, (3) identifying the pattern of climate change from the household perceptions and the problems in home garden, and (4) the changes made in the home gardens.
TopBackground
Biodiversity can augment economic activities related to agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Globally nearly half of the human population are directly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, and many of the most vulnerable people depend directly on biodiversity to fulfil their daily subsistence needs. The SDG framework provides a helpful framework to demonstrate the fundamental importance of environmental issues alongside social and economic issues. Importantly, if plant conservation is not achieved, then the achievement of the SDGs is put at risk, suggesting that the integration and mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration and plant protection in particular is of fundamental importance to the achievement of sustainability within the planetary boundaries. According to Okpaire (2019), Home Gardens provide the eight functions contribution to attaining eight of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are: (i) generate small but significant stream of income, especially for woman, (ii) supply nutritive food and make food production system more productive and resilient, (iii) improve the health of women of reproductive age and young children give women more choice and control over productive resources, (iv) give women more choice and control over productive resources (iv) spur entrepreneurship, creatively and economic opportunities, particular foe woman, (v) contribute to greening of rural and urban settlements and greater resilience to disasters, (vi) have minimal food losses and help to close nutrient cycles, (vii) strengthen household-level resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Home Garden: “Home Garden” is a complex multifunctional land system that combines multiple farming components of the homestead and provides environmental services, household needs
Ecosystem: A dynamic complex interaction of biotic and abiotic components of environment in a given region.
Canopy: The uppermost branches of the trees in a forest, forming a more or less continuous layer of foliage.
Woody trees: A plant with thick and tough stems
Biodiversity: It is short form of biological diversity. It indicates the totality of genes, species and ecosystems in a region or the world.
DBH: Diameter at breast height. (DBH), is a standard method of expressing the diameter of the trunk or bole of a standing tree.
Climate Change: Any natural or induced change in climate either globally or in a particular area