In order to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities, it is necessary that they should have easy access to information related to various adaptation measures and practices. All these practices should be readily available to the communities. The same holds true for all those measures that local communities are carrying forward from generation to generation to adapt to their changing environment. There are so many examples of village-level efforts in India that any attempt to address the issues of energy security, climate change and development may include rainwater harvesting techniques, organic farming, natural ventilation mechanisms that have been used by local communities since ages.

The process of sharing knowledge faces many challenges due to barriers such as non-availability of proper technology, infrastructure, non-accessibility, lack of motivation, cultural differences, language, etc. As suggested by Peter Senge, American scientist and director of the Center for Organisational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, ‘knowledge sharing only occurs’ when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for actions; it is about creating learning process and, therefore, to some extent non-willingness to share the knowledge with others is also one of the barriers. Apart from all these issues, the non-availability of a suitable platform is the most important hindering factor. This situation creates a need to build a suitable platform that will give an opportunity to communities to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences. Stress should be given to establish a dynamic knowledge sharing platform or system as one of the ways to deal with climate change induced impacts on communities. The system should be such that it will make the process of knowledge sharing simpler and easy to use and without any complex technicalities.

Historically, the process of knowledge sharing is being done through traditional ways. The traditional mode of transferring or exchanging knowledge includes conversations with elderly people as the vehicles for passing knowledge from one generation to the next. Various modern methods / tools like newspaper, radio, video, and the Internet have been in use for entertainment and, lately, to also bridge the information gap. Recently, help lines and SMSes have become popular and easily accessible as an appropriate medium for information dissemination.

On similar lines, the Development Alternatives (DA) Group has been actively engaged in such kind of activities and thereby helping communities to adapt to changing climatic conditions. ISRO – VRC (Village Resource Centre), Lifelines India or ‘Soochna se Samadhan Sewa’, Radio Bundelkhand, are some examples of similar kinds of initiatives.

The DA Group, with the technical support from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has launched the Village Resource Centre (VRC) programme. This programme is a platform to provide and promote a single-window delivery of need-based services in the areas of weather, environment, agriculture, education, health, nutrition and alternate livelihoods to the rural population.

The Lifelines India project, commonly known as Soochna se Samadhan Sewa (information for solution services), provides agriculture-based advisory services to farmers of the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh using ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) as a platform. The initiative provides voice-based information to rural communities via a phone and voice mail-based questions and answers service and farmers can get the best solution /answer within 24 hours. Specifically, this provides the farmers with access to a network of agricultural experts and a database of knowledge to enable the farmers to resolve issues pertaining to coping with impacts of climate change on crop yield, water management, etc.

Radio Bundelkhand is a communication medium meant for local communities and, hence, is a community radio. It is a sustainable and interactive platform for the marginalised and illiterate population to be heard, be informed, shape their individual knowledge opinions, learn the give-and-take of informed dialogue and become more decisive agents in their own development. The purpose of Radio Bundelkhand is to work along with local communities to use this medium as a platform to crate awareness, give information, and participate in local self governance besides providing entertainment. Radio Bundelkhand broadcasts information and programmes that are relevant to the local audience, thereby enabling and empowering the communities to bring about social change.