Integrated Economic Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in Indo-Gangetic Basin.

Integrated Economic Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in Indo-Gangetic Basin

Harbir Singh¹, Nataraja Subash¹, Gokul Paudel², Kamrul Hassan³,  Dinesh Tapa Magar⁴, Babooji Gangwar¹,  Guillermo Baigorria⁵, Roberto Valdivia⁶ and  John Antle⁶

¹ Project Directorate for Farming Systems Research, Modipuram, Uttar Pradesh, India

² CIMMYT

³ BARC, Bangladesh

⁴ NARC, Nepal

⁵University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA

⁶ Oregon State University, USA

ABSTRACT

The Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) is characterised by cereal-based farming systems with livestock being an integral part of the farm household economy. More than half of the population derives their livelihood from agriculture sector which is dominated by small and marginal holdings (about two-thirds of the holdings being less than 2 ha.) and system productivity is either stagnating or declining. Though cereal crops (mainly rice and wheat) are crucial to ensuring the food security in the region, sustaining their productivity has become a major challenge in recent years. Climate change impacts are very much visible in this region with greater variability of monsoon and an increase in the occurrence of extreme weather events (heat waves and intense precipitation) with adverse impacts on the livelihoods of majority of marginal and smallholders. Though several models exist which capture climate change impact on specific crops and/or livestock but these are inadequate to study the complex interactions of crop-livestock enterprises under climate change and its impact on the farm economy. Further, the socio-economic and agro-ecological diversity of the region requires identification of site-specific and location-specific adaptation strategies to cope with adverse effects of climate change. This paper shows implementation of an integrated climate-crop-economic modelling (using AgMIP protocols) framework for an integrated economic assessment of climate change and adaptation strategy at four locations across the IGB (India, Nepal and Bangladesh). This framework enables integration of location-specific and farm-specific climate and crop modelling output with economic impact assessment. The assessment clearly brings out the likely changes in mean net farm returns, per capita income and poverty rates under most likely future climate scenarios. The paper also shows that adoption of suitable adaptation strategy have positive impacts on farm returns, per capita income and poverty rate. The results show that it is possible to capture climate change impacts on farming systems and devise location-specific adaptation strategies to effectively deal with adverse impact of climate change. This novel approach demonstrate how to implement an integrated analysis of climate change impact on farming system, and highlights the need for initiating such integrated economic assessment covering more sites for better representation of the farming systems in this vast geographical region. A comprehensive assessment of socio-economic impacts of climate change on future agricultural production systems (2050s) would be useful in devising appropriate adaptation strategy to improve the livelihoods and food security under climate change in the IGB region.