Climate Resilient Agriculture an Approach to Reduce the Ill-Effect of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate resilient agriculture (CRA) is a sustainable approach for converting and reorienting agricultural systems to support food security under the new realities of climate change through different adaptation and mitigation mechanisms. Agricultural systems are extremely vulnerable to climate change, given their sensitivity to variations in different threats like temperature, precipitation and incidence of natural events and disasters such as droughts and floods with this on an average the extreme weather patterns can impact farm incomes in the range of 15-18 %. Threats can be reduced by increasing the adaptive capacity of farmers as well as increasing resilience and resource use efficiency in agricultural production systems. CRA promotes synchronized actions by farmers, government, scientist, private sector, and policy-makers through three main action areas: (1) Building the capacity to identify the threats; (2) Curing the threats through adaptation and mitigation process (3) Sustain their adaptive mechanisms over a long time. The vulnerability of existing conditions of poverty, malnutrition and increasing populations puts intense pressure on finite natural resources, especially land, water and energy – all of which are integral to agricultural systems. In this context, it becomes imperative to adopt Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA) measures at co-operative scale to address the impending impact of climate change on agriculture.