Climate Smart Agriculture for Building Resilience and Improving Livelihoods in Rainfed Areas

Abstract

The biggest challenge, human kind facing in the 21st century is to cope up with the impacts of the climate change which is affecting the sustainable development globally. The IPCC (Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change) has clearly established that climate change is reality now and going to affect food security and sustainability in different regions (IPCC, 2013). Our generation is the first generation to assess the impacts of the climate change and also is the last generation which can do interventions to minimize/reverse the climate change on the globe. The dryland agriculture which is globally 80% and contributes 60% of the food is the most vulnerable systems for the impacts of the climate change. Dryland areas are also the hotspots of poverty in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and are more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. In order to sustain the growth globally as well as the livelihoods and achieve the goals of food and nutritional security, there is an urgent need particularly in thickly populated countries like India and China. In India, 58% of arable land is dryland agriculture and will be severely affected as l/3rd of the developing world will be facing physical scarcity of water by 2030 (Rockstorm et al., 2007). There is an urgent need to develop climate smart agriculture by adopting appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies to build the resilience of the systems as well as livelihoods for small farmholders in the country...