Environment

Bio-happiness: Building a Culture for Climate Resilience

By Aditya Anurag Nanda

Posted on January 15, 2026

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Bhubaneswar, Jan- 14: Climate change is the pressing reality of the present and future generations, af lookinfecting everyone, cutting across region, religion, and society. The importunate climate crisis may be the one, but people are fighting millions of struggles to find a solution to this change in their own way. In this perseverance, Bio-happiness is an approach to enhance the climate resilience of the environment and local communities so that the biodiversity is sustained and it provides all kinds of ecosystem services without being destroyed.

Bio-happiness, as an approach that has been adopted by the youngest district of India in the Northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, Keyi Panyor, established in 2024, vouches for the coexistence of human well-being and environmental sustainability on the same platform.

The concept of Bio-happiness, which integrates human happiness with the rich ecosystem services, human health, and environmental health, predisposes the fact that the development paradigm need not always culminate in damaging the environment. Human well-being and happiness can be achieved by focusing on food security, nutritional security, and livelihood security, which go hand in hand with soil health and environmental health. The key to achieving all these targets is reviving the region’s forgotten food culture.

The forgotten regional food culture takes a holistic approach to food availability, aligning with seasonal rhythms and agroclimatic zones, placing less stress on the soil while serving a diverse array of nutritious dishes on the platter. Simultaneously, this new-age happiness concept endorses the use of modern technologies such as AI, satellite imagery, and other environmentally friendly tools to harness the natural resource endowment to create sustainable wealth and economic opportunities.

In this context of Bio-happiness, I could recount the good old memories of my Grandparents, who never get tired of sharing their childhood days. In their narratives, frequent references were made to their backyard pond, mango orchard, domestic cattle, and other characters who played significant roles in shaping family members’ lives.

In Granny’s household, the cows and buffaloes,, each with a unique name and identity, played their roles in providing milk and ploughing agricultural land, while also forming an emotional connection with the family members. Likewise, I heard tales from my grandfather about how his mother used to cook freshly caught fish from their backyard pond and rice at the same time in a typical oven, just to serve him so he could get to school on time.

In my grandparents’ anecdotes, the seasonal cycles were always followed by the consumption of typical, climate-specific cereals, fruits, and vegetables, along with a unique cooking method. Granny used to say that her mother always persuaded her to eat fresh Neem-flower recipes during the month of Chaitra (March-April) to avoid ill health for the rest of the year. Likewise, each season is marked by the celebration of festivals, followed by the serving of season-specific delicacies, rich in herbs, spices, legumes, and vegetables, nourishing the body while keeping diseases at bay.

As far as I remember from my grandparents’ parables, my ancestors followed a food calendar, guided by the days, months, and seasons. On some days of the week, meat of any form is prohibited, inculcating in them the indulgence in vegetables and pulses; while a few fruits are restricted to be consumed on some particular occasion. The ancestral culinary science incorporated holistic norms of nutrition, delicately balancing human needs, the sustainable development of the cattle and fish population, and environmental health. Those dietary calendars emphasized the inclusion of season-specific flowers, leaves, herbs, fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulses, and voluntary fasting, a unique way to detoxify the human body. Probably the lens of diet and nutrition our forefathers used kept them away from nutrition-deficiency diseases and other lifestyle-related disorders while ensuring environmental sustainability.

In an era of increasing climatic uncertainty, the focus of development needs to be holistic, inclusive of environment, human health, and economic well-being based on the principle of sustainability. Reviving forgotten local food habits need should be promoted to achieve climate resilience by emphasizing individual wellbeing and bio-happiness. Probably, the time has come that we bring change in our behaviour so that we coexist with the biodiversity and contribute to protect and regenerate the ecosystem around us, so that we live healthy and happy.