Wednesday, April 25, 2012

South Asian farmers helped to share "climate smart" knowledge

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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