High-altitude Adaptation: Climate Change in India’s Palani Hills

With changes witnessed in the fruiting of produce over the last few decades, it is now more important than ever to listen closely to the earth, attune our responses to its shifting patterns and talk to each other, say residents of the verdant Palani Hills in Tamil Nadu, India.

‘When the climate changes, humans will have to change. But there is one thing that will not change: we all have to eat to live,‘ writes 25-year-old Murugeshwari, a member of the indigenous Palaiyar community who lives near the hill town of Kodaikanal in South India. She reflects on how the growth of mushrooms and seasonal produce have been affected of late in a series of articles connected to climate change and resultant changes in landscape.

A daily wage labourer, Murugeshwari was awarded a grant to write about the environment and climate change for The Kodai Chronicle and Sky Islands, hyperlocal ecological platforms I founded in the Palani Hills. The Palani Hills form a mountain range in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, an eastward extension of the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats: one of the eight hottest biodiversity hotspots in the world. We would do well to listen to this young woman: what happens here affects us all.

The Palaiyars are indigenous people whose community has historically lived close to nature in the Palani Hills, with deep ties to the land. From the 1970s through today, they are among those who have witnessed gradual but tangible changes most intimately. Farmers in Kodaikanal cultivate crops adapted to high elevations and cooler climates, such as flat beans, chow-chow, hill garlic, carrots, avocados, and coffee, relying on rainwater, open wells, and streams for irrigation.

‘They use inorganic farming practices to tackle challenges of climate change such as reduced yield and increased pests and diseases,’ says the Centre for Environment and Humanity (CEH), a local environmental centre run by Kodaikanal International School. Through surveys regarding recent patterns, CEH found that 41 percent of farmers have observed a decrease in rainfall while nearly 80 percent reported rise in temperatures; leading to water scarcity and, in some instances, drought. The increase in extreme weather events caused by climate change like floods, cyclones, and strong winds have impacted soil health, and 65 percent of farmers have experienced a decrease in crop yield, as compared to 20 years ago.

‘When we first heard of climate change and global warming, we thought they wouldn’t affect the hills because the weather was always cold and the monsoons were on time,’ says veteran farmer Shaker Nagarajan, who grows coffee and other produce in Thadiyankudisai, located in the lower Palani Hills. ‘But recently, over the last five to six years, we noticed that we are experiencing rainfall almost throughout the year; we received 50 plus inches of rain in the first 9 months of the year, but the northeast monsoon barely brought 10 inches. As agriculturists, we need to adapt to times such as these and use climate change to our advantage. We now have the opportunity to plant year-round. However, we must also remain vigilant and alert.’

Awarded the Plant Genome Saviour Award in 2010 for the revival of the Virupakshi hill banana from extinction, Nagarajan, president of the Tamil Nadu Hill Banana Growers’ Federation, is among those who have adapted to the changes in temperature. The winters are becoming colder, and at other times, warmer; this September was warmer by almost three degrees Fahrenheit, he says.

Earlier, he says, most of the rainfall was observed during the northeast monsoon, with a third of annual rainfall witnessed during summer showers. Recently, the average rainfall dropped from 60 inches to 23 inches or so; one third of the normal rainfall. This was when they began losing some plants. Temperate crops are most affected but coffee has proved to be more resilient. For two years, the Palani Hills did not produce plums. When they emerged again last year, the yields were smaller; and, in 2024, plums have bloomed twice. ‘So strange to find these large, luscious plums flourishing in the orchard in November, a cold, rainy month – barely six months after the last harvest,’ said Kodaikanal-based organic gardener and writer Lathika George, posting on Instagram from the upper Palanis last year. These erratic patterns are now the norm.

‘When I first started out as a young coffee farmer in the late 1980s, we measured the yield per acre in tonnes – a half tonne to three quarter tonnes was our average yield. Now, we’re counting coffee beans by kilo per acre despite being substantially more expensive with hi-tech inputs and more effort on our part,’ says Mahesh Narayanan, a ‘natural farmer’ (his handle on Instagram) in the Kanalkadu hamlet, close to Nagarajan in the lower Palanis. Narayanan has been farming here since 1987, and notes that the mandarin orange has vanished due to warming-related diseases. But there is a silver lining – pepper has started yielding at altitudes of 1000 metres, whereas thirty years ago, it was mostly just vegetative growth. ‘The name of the game is adaptability, and farmers are thinking of other crops like cardamom and even considering Robusta coffee on lands on which Arabica coffee was once the mainstay,’ he says. ‘Those who do not adapt may perish.’

Nagarajan is encouraged by the advances scientists have made on climate-resistant varieties of coffee, despite setbacks. While 60 percent of the 120 species of coffee are susceptible to climate change, he goes by a 10-year moving average (500 kilos) and keeps things in perspective. He also uses consultants from the Coffee Board, keeps talking to other farmers via WhatsApp groups and meets them in-person.

The key lies in diversity: growing multiple crops. ‘We can make up on the coffee shortfall with bananas. Like in the 1970s, when bananas were affected with the bunchy-top virus, we brought in pepper (this is now priced high). Avocado can replace mandarin oranges, and we can grow rambutan, litchi, mangosteen, macadamia nuts, breadfruit and starfruit,’ he says. ‘Now we can also import these plants, just like the farmers in Kerala do.’

Hill communities don’t always have access to advances available to farmers in the plains. CEH notes the absence of targeted policies for high-altitude farming and inadequate support for leased farms and farm laborers, which leaves them vulnerable. ‘Though 60% of interviewed farmers have completed primary education, farmers make decisions based on their past experience rather than on the anticipation of abstract future events, and therefore are vulnerable to impacts of climate change, as there is a lack of long-term strategizing and planning,’ the Centre notes.

This makes conversations, education and proactive action around climate change crucial. ‘It has always been tough for people living in the hills,’ says Nagarajan, who refers to the analogy of a deer who wakes each morning and has to stay watchful to thrive. ‘You have to keep running, keep moving.’