Human activity is altering the earth‘s climate with serious implications for food security, health, biodiversity and the natural disasters. Global Warning has significant impacts on conditions affecting agriculture and challenge major production of grain and industrial crops. Agriculture produces significant effects on climate change primarily through the production and release of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). The climate change impact negatively irrigation availability for agriculture, soil health, pests, and crop and livestock production. Hence, India needs to respond with strategies to both mitigate greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change. A country‘s resilience to climate change depends first on its adaptive capacity. Strengthening adaptive capacity requires mainstreaming climate change adaptation in development planning. Since private markets and autonomous actions alone will not lead to an adequate level of adaptation, measures driven by public policy and government interventions may be considered. A policy priority is to be traced to identify the binding constraints to adapt climate change strategies. A thorough review of binding constraints may include information, knowledge, and technology gaps; market and price distortions; policy, regulatory, and behavioral barriers; lack of necessary finance for upfront investment; and other hidden transaction costs. The agricultural strategies to manage climate variability consists of both short term and long term strategies. Hence, India has to enhance institutional capacities to make better use of the existing and potential international funding resources.
India has the highest technical potential to sequester carbon in agriculture in the world and the agriculture sector also provides significant potential for mitigation. Major mitigation options in agriculture include improved crop and grazing land management; restoration of organic soils (including peat land) that are drained for crop production, and restoration of degraded lands; livestock management; manure and bio-solid management, and bio-energy use. Measures for reducing GHG emissions from the agriculture sector could be explored through the combination of market-based programs, regulatory measures, voluntary agreements, and international programs. As most of the states in India experience similar climate hazards, regional strategies are likely to be more cost-effective than national and sub national actions in dealing with many Trans boundary issues.
Against this background, this paper aims to find out the status and impact of global climatic changes on the current Indian agricultural economy with a specific emphasis to strengthen the existing Adaptation and Mitigation policy instruments calling need for a thinking on innovative and viable measures of adaptation and mitigation to avoid the adverse effects on Indian agricultural economy in future. To conclude, considering the significant variations found in temperatures and a sharp rise in the frequency of extreme weather events, an in depth study on the climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, costs, opportunities, and policy options in India become inevitable. India can help in increasing its adaptive capacity to Climate Change through augmenting production, improving land-use and natural resource management policies, improvement of risk management through early warning system and crop insurance, establishing regional food security programmes etc.
Climate Change Impact, Adaptation and Mitigation, Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), Adaptive capacity, vulnerability to climate change, agricultural productivity
