Impact of climate change on food security in India - A paper published in the journal Advances in Asian Social Science

This paper published in the journal Advances in Asian Social Science analyses the food security condition of India during the last few decades and the impact of climate change on food security of India. Climate change in India has been predicted to lead to high average temperature, changed rainfall patterns, increased severity and frequency of floods, droughts and cyclones, oceanic acidification, climate changes due to GHGs.

These when combined with other factors such as use of high yielding techniques of agriculture, arbitrary use of natural resources, deforestation, reduction in pastures, loss of fertility of the soil, loss of forest cover, flora and fauna disappearance are predicted to lead to serious consequences for food security, water availability and consequently health and livelihood issues in India, thus slowing down the pace of development.

The direct impact of climate change on agriculture and food supply has been expected to includes shortage in grain production resulting in less availability of food items, especially to the economically poor people, changes in agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, shift in planting dates of agricultural crops, preference of crop genotypes due to adaptation to changing climate, soil erosion, soil drainage and lower soil fertility levels.

Additionally, the incidence of pests, weeds and diseases in food crops will be more pronounced. An overall increase of 20C in temperature and 7% in rainfall will lead to an almost 8% loss in farm level net revenue. High anthropogenic production of greenhouse gases and associated changes in climate are also being looked upon as a great challenge to food and livelihood security in India.

Climate change will make monsoons unpredictable. As a result, rain-fed wheat cultivation in South Asia as well as in India will suffer in a big way. Total cereal production will go down. The crop yield per hectare will be hit badly, causing food insecurity and loss of livelihood. The rising levels of the sea in the coastal areas will damage nursery areas for fisheries, causing coastal erosion and flooding. Agricultural land will shrink and the available land may not remain suitable for the present crops for too long. Farmers have to explore options of changing crops suitable to weather.

This paper argues that climate change is  only one of the factors affecting food systems in India. The changing temperature and rainfall patterns and increasing carbon dioxide level will undoubtedly have important effects on agriculture and thus on food security of India. However, this when combined with a range of other social and economic factors such as poverty, inequality, inequity in distribution of the already scarce resources, demographic transitions, urbanisation would further put pressure on food security by increasing the gap between the haves and the havenots leading to poor health and developmental outcomes.

The paper argues that frequent climatic extremes can result in droughts, floods, migration and famines and thus, food security has to be at the centre stage of all actions on a long term sustainable basis. Thus, mitigation and adaptation strategies demanding far greater research and development effort, and financial, institutional and policy support  are neededto deal with the situation.

The paper ends by arguing that the most effective response strategy to climate vulnerability is embedded in  the multisectoral programmes, viz. food security, poverty alleviation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.

The paper can be accessed at this link