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CLIMATE CHANGE-IMPACT ON AGRICULTURE

In developing countries, climate change will cause yield declines for the most important crops. South Asia will be particularly hard hit.

Climate change will have varying effects on irrigated yields across regions, but irrigated yields for all crops in South Asia will experience large declines.

Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural crops–rice, wheat, maize, and soybeans. Higher feed prices will result in higher meat prices. As a result, climate change will reduce the growth in meat consumption slightly and cause a more substantial fall in cereals consumption.

Calorie availability in 2050 will not only be lower than in the no–climate-change scenario—it will actually decline relative to 2000 levels throughout the developing world.

By 2050, the decline in calorie availability will increase child malnutrition by 20 percent relative to a world with no climate change. Climate change will eliminate much of the improvement in child malnourishment levels that would occur with no climate change.

Suggestions :

The results of this analysis suggest the following policy and program recommendations.

	1. Design and implement good overall development policies and programs.
	A pro-growth, pro-poor development agenda that supports agricultural sustainability also contributes to food security and climate-change adaptation in the developing world.

2. Increase investments in agricultural productivity.

Geater investments in agricultural science and technology are needed to meet the demands of a world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
Productivity enhancements that increase farmers’ resilience in the face of climate-change pressures will have poverty-reducing effects.
Higher yields and more cropped area require maintaining and increasing the density of rural road networks to increase access to markets and reduce transaction costs. Investments in irrigation infrastructure are also needed, especially to improve the efficiency of water use, but care must be taken to avoid investments in places where wateravailability is likely to decline.

3. Reinvigorate national research and extension programs.

Within countries, extension programs can play a key role in information sharing by transferring technology, facilitating interaction, building capacity among farmers, and encouraging farmers to form their own networks.
Extension services that specifically address climate-change adaptation include disseminating local cultivars of drought-resistant crop varieties, teaching improved management systems, and gathering information to facilitate national research work. Farmer organizations can be an effective information-sharing mechanism and have the potential to provide cost-effective links between government efforts and farmer activities.

	4. Support community-based adaptation strategies.
	Community-based adaptation strategies can help rural communities strengthen their capacity to cope with disasters, improve their land-management skills, and diversify their livelihoods.

	5. Increase funding for adaptation programs by an additional $7 billion per year.
	At least $7 billion per year in additional funding is required to finance the research, rural infrastructure, and irrigation investments needed to offset the negative effects of climate change on human well-being. South Asia requires investment in improving irrigation efficiency. IFARI Sep 09

Unprecedented floods and droughts…

Climate change is a reality. In the near future, the effects of climate change will impact us all adversely, but will severely affect the poorest. Climate change induced disasters have eroded the India’s Gross Domestic Product by 2 percent during 1996-2001 and consumed 12 percent of government revenue. It is the poorest whose entire existence, from food and shelter to employment, depends on natural resources and the environment. It’s time to act. UNDP

According to International Centre for Food Policy Research study findings, even at the present level of climate change India, whose agriculture is heavily dependent on monsoons, could lose its ability to feed a population that is estimated to increase by 500 million by 2050, and large numbers of people are likely to be dislocated by rising sea levels, floods and droughts. Mankind’s escape from poverty through conventional industrialisation added hugely to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that developing countries may not be able to escape poverty in the same way. ET 161009
Compiled by: K. Ramasubba Reddy-211009