Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Adapting to climate change is key to food security

The impact of climate change on people and food systems is already being felt in more ways than one. To help vulnerable people cope with the effects of climate change, government needs to come up with strategies and adaptation measures that can minimise the risk. But the ground reality tells a different and deplorable story.

The impact of climate change is unfolding at a pace that’s much quicker than is being predicted. The risks of climate change loom ever more imminent for a country like India, where 70% of its agriculture is rain-fed and totally dependent on the vagaries of monsoon. Considering that over 65% of our 1.2-billion population depend on agriculture for a living and because people involved in agriculture tend to be poorer as compared to urban residents, the impact of climate change on the agriculture sector is far reaching with significant repercussions for our economy.

Various studies have shown that over 80% of farmers in India – who are mainly small and marginal farmers and contribute about 50% of the total crop production of the country – will be the most affected by climate changes. A World Bank report says incomes on the small rain-fed farms in Andhra Pradesh could decline by 5% under modest climate change and by over 20% under harsher conditions, bringing farmers closer to, and in many cases, under the poverty line. The report, while making a strong case for a shift in agricultural systems in order to overcome future climate change pressures, warns that if suitable measures are not acted upon to address the impact of climate change, the consequences would be grave and widespread. The report states that under the climate change scenario, sugarcane yields are expected to decline considerably (by nearly 30%) in Maharashtra, as a result of increased moisture stress caused by warmer climate in the future.

According to Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index, India ranked 7th amongst the most affected countries on the parameter of extreme weather conditions between 1990 and 2008. None of the developed countries figure in the ten most affected countries’ list, which points to the fact that it is the poorer countries like India and Bangladesh (ranked #1on the Climate Risk Index) that are most vulnerable to climatic risks. For example, over the last 100 years in the state of Odisha, 49 years have seen floods, 30 have seen droughts, and 11 faced other extreme weather events like cyclones. Another study has shown that the number of villages in India experiencing drought is increasing. For example, in the state of Gujarat, only 2,000 villages experienced drought in 1961, but by 1988, over 145,000 villages were affected.

Although agriculture contributes only 20% to the GDP of Indian economy, its significance in terms of sustaining large swathes of population cannot be overstated. About 70% of the Indian population still live in rural areas where agriculture provides the only source of income and livelihood. Most of the rural folk live off small farms that are dependent on timely and sufficient rainfall during the monsoon months between June and September. However, with the changing climate, rainfall patterns have become erratic, leaving farmers exposed to the risks of drought and floods. “The agriculture sector in India is already facing problems relating to sustainability. To those daunting challenges, climate change adds further pressure on agriculture, adversely affecting the poor,” says economic expert S.K Dutta. “Climate change is already affecting the ecology and depleting the levels of soil fertility. Add to that the practices of over-drawing of water, decreasing forest covers and over-usage of pesticides and manures, which in turn adversely affect soil produce over the long term, and you get a very grim outlook for the future,” he adds. Experts have estimated that every one degree rise in temperature is likely to lead to a 5-10% decrease in crop yields. Thus, rice production in India could decrease by almost a tonne/hectare if the temperature goes up 20 degree Celsius, while each 10 degree rise in mean temperature could cause wheat yield losses of seven million tonnes per year.

When crop yields are adversely impacted by changes in the climate, it becomes almost unavoidable to keep food price inflation under leash. Already, shortage of food grains due to flood and drought in several parts of India is a big factor in food price inflation, which the country has been grappling with in recent months. Food price inflation stood at an uncomfortably high 9.94% in March this year, the most recent month for which figures were available when this story went to press. The most worrisome part of food price inflation is that it pushes marginal sections of the society, including poor farmers, under greater duress. A study by the Asian Development Bank states that at current levels of increase in food prices, India’s poor were likely to increase by 2.9% and 2.1% in the rural and urban areas respectively.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
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