By Bhogtoram Mawroh
Recently, the Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Conrad Sangma, held a workshop on El Niño preparedness in the state. This climatic phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years, is the result of unusually warm sea temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean, which affects the monsoon in South and Southeast Asia, resulting in reduced rainfall in these regions. As a result, there are already reports that farmers in India have planted nearly 23% fewer summer crops—namely rice, cotton, corn, and soybeans—than they had during the same period last year.
No comparable data are available specifically for Meghalaya. But considering that around 80% of the population is rural, agriculture is primarily rain-fed, and over 60% of the labour force is engaged in agriculture and allied sectors, there is no doubt that this will have a large impact, especially on the rural economy. As a consequence, it will lead to a fall in demand in general and a rise in food prices is also likely. So, while the contribution of agriculture to GDP is just below 20%, the overall impact on the economy will be much greater. Therefore, unless steps are taken to compensate for the losses the rural population is going to face—either through increased investment in labour-intensive sectors (e.g., a rise in the allocation to VB-GRAM G) or some form of income support—it is going to be a very difficult year for the people of the state in particular and the country in general.
Extreme events like El Niño are part of the global climatic pattern and are to be expected. But the rise in global temperatures due to climate change will mean that, in the future, El Niño could become not only more frequent but also more intense, which poses a serious threat to agriculture and, through its multiplier effects, to other sectors of the economy as well. And if the situation worsens, we could witness a repeat of an event that took place around 4,000 years ago, an event so significant that an entire geological age was named after it. This period marked the beginning of the Meghalayan Age.
Earth’s 4.5-billion-year-old history can be divided into many parts based on distinct events that have taken place in the past. The largest of these divisions is the eon, of which there are four: the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic. The last eon is the one in which we are currently living, and it began 541 million years ago, when the Earth experienced the development of plants and the release of free oxygen that helped drive the rapid evolution of various life forms. An eon can, in turn, be divided into eras, which can subsequently be subdivided into periods, epochs, and ages.
We are currently living in the Cenozoic Era, Quaternary Period, Holocene Epoch, and Meghalayan Age. All these divisions are based on rock formations and fossils. Both indicators are repositories of the changes that have taken place on Earth and contain clues about past climatic and geological conditions. The Meghalayan Age is a little different than the rest because it is the first geological age whose defining climatic event has been shown to have had a profound impact on human history. In fact, since the Holocene Epoch, human impact on the environment has also grown dramatically.
The Holocene Epoch started after the end of the Pleistocene, which corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age) in human history. This was the period on which the famous animated movie Ice Age was based, and mammoths were the iconic animals of that period. The beginning of the Holocene is also important because agriculture was discovered by humans around this time. The domestication of rice in South China by Austro-Asiatic speakers, to whom the Khasis are related, took place during this period. In fact, before this period, human society was characterised by hunting and gathering. The uncertainty and extensive nature of this type of economy ensured that the human population could never grow very large. It was agriculture that allowed the generation of surplus, which was then used by different human societies to build great civilisations such as the Harappan, Egyptian, Sumerian, and Chinese civilisations. It is this link with these civilisations that brings us to the current age, the Meghalayan Age.
The concept of the Meghalayan Age was first proposed because of specific chemical signatures found in stalactites and stalagmites in a cave at Mawmluh, a small village located in the East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. This cave is 7.2 km long and in 2003, researchers, accompanied by Brian Kharpran Daly, a cave enthusiast and explorer from Meghalaya, conducted a geological study in the cave and collected stalagmite specimens. It was the ratio of oxygen isotopes found in these specimens that provided the crucial evidence for identifying the Meghalayan Age as part of the geological time scale. Oxygen has two stable isotopes: ¹⁶O (the lighter one, with 8 protons and 8 neutrons) and ¹⁸O (the heavier one, with 8 protons and 10 neutrons). The ratio of oxygen isotopes reflects fluctuations in rainfall patterns. During extended dry periods, rainwater contains a higher proportion of ¹⁸O, and its elevated concentration can therefore be used to infer a decrease in rainfall during such periods. This is exactly what scientists found at Mawmluh.
In a 2012 paper, An Abrupt Shift in the Indian Monsoon 4000 Years Ago, Berkelhammer and colleagues found that around 4,000 years ago there was a shift in rainfall patterns, characterised by either an earlier Indian Summer Monsoon withdrawal or a general decline in the total amount of monsoon precipitation. They inferred this after analysing a high-resolution stalagmite oxygen-isotope record spanning the early and mid-Holocene from Mawmluh, Meghalaya, which showed a higher ratio of ¹⁸O in the stalagmite specimens collected from the cave. The authors suggested that changes in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), along with other factors, must have played an important role in influencing the strength of the monsoon. This period of weakened monsoon lasted for around 200 years and coincided with climatic changes occurring across North Africa, the Middle East, the Tibetan Plateau, southern Europe, and North America.
Even though the authors did not establish causation, they did suggest that prolonged drought could have been responsible for the deurbanisation of the Harappan Civilisation and the similar societal reorganisation of the Old Kingdom Nile Civilisation. Both these civilisations were agrarian-based and must have found it difficult to sustain themselves in light of reduced water availability. Because the specimen that provided the evidence came from Meghalaya, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) announced that the new division of geological time would be called the Meghalayan Age and would appear on all official charts depicting Earth’s geological past.
A similar study conducted in the Gupteswar Cave (Odisha) and the Kadapa caves (Andhra Pradesh) by scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) reached a similar conclusion, identifying a prolonged drought period around 4,000 years ago. Among the factors suggested for the weakened monsoon regime were El Niño events, which are believed to have contributed to the collapse of the Harappan Civilization. Therefore, if El Niño events become more pronounced in the coming years, there is every possibility that their impact on present-day society will be equally decisive.
The Meghalayan Age is very appropriate for the time in which we are living, when human impact has resulted in drastic changes to the global climate regime. Climate change projections have indicated that dry areas will become drier and wet areas will become wetter. In other words, intensified droughts and floods are going to become more common. This will have a drastic impact on food production systems, just as it did 4,000 years ago, when the mega-drought led to the decline of ancient agrarian civilisations and heralded the birth of the Meghalayan Age.
Among the measures that the Chief Minister spoke about to tackle situations such as El Niño, he stressed the need to innovate and develop farming practices suited to Meghalaya’s unique geographical and climatic conditions. It is here that the biodiversity-rich traditional farming practices of the indigenous peoples of Meghalaya can provide a very important solution. The Chief Minister also emphasised the need for integrated measures such as water conservation, spring rejuvenation, the construction of check dams and reservoirs, and other water-retention structures to enhance long-term water security. Here, one needs to ask what has happened to the 2019 Meghalaya Water Policy. Wasn’t it designed for this very purpose? These and other questions will become increasingly important, particularly as we can expect more events like El Niño in the future. Whether the Government can tackle these challenges remains to be seen.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organisation or institution)
