Nita Bhalla in AlertNet: A new initiative to spread
information on adapting to climate change across South Asia will encourage
farmers, scientists and policy makers to share effective ways of dealing with
the impacts of global warming.
South Asia is home to one fifth of the world's population
and is vulnerable to climate extremes, experiencing seasonal floods, cyclones
and droughts that ravage vast swathes of agricultural land each year.
More than half of South Asians are dependent on farming, but
most have little access to information that would help them adapt their
agricultural practices to climate variations, say experts from the Consultative
Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), a global network of
research bodies.
"There is a lot of data and scientific analysis
available on projected changes in climate, observed and expected impacts on
agriculture, and best practices for adaptation," said Pramod Aggarwal,
head of CGIAR's Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security
(CCAFS) in South Asia.
"But this intelligence is often scattered so that
farmers, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders cannot access it to
make informed decisions. South Asia’s climate adaptation challenge is too
immense for this knowledge gap to persist."...
A farm in Maharashtra, India, shot by Raama, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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