Description

ABOUT THE BOOK

Societies, cultures and economies in the world’s history have successfully developed by mastering their abilities to adapt to climatic conditions. However, the last decades have been characterized by a dramatic growth in human population that is imposing unprecedented pressures on natural ecosystems and on existing agricultural production systems. In addition to this pressure, societies are expected to face changes in climate at also unprecedented rate. Agricultural production systems will require effective adaptive strategies to overcome these expected pressures in the immediate future.

Increasing climatic variability associated with will result in considerable seasonal/annual fluctuations in food production. All agricultural commodities even today are sensitive to such variability. Droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, heavy precipitation events, hot extremes and heat waves are known to negatively impact agricultural production, and farmer’s livelihood.

Climate change is one of the most important global environmental challenges in the history of mankind. The accelerating pace of climate change, combined with global population and income growth, threatens food security everywhere particularly in the developing countries. Assuming a global temperature rise of 4.4°C by 2080 over the cultivated areas, India’s agricultural output is projected to fall by 30-40% which would be quite alarming unless proper remedial measures are taken. Further, occurrence of new diseases, pests together  with severity of the existing ones is also foreseen. The impacts of climate change on Indian continent are less explored and less known till now making the future scenarios more uncertain for vulnerability assessment and risk management. This book is an effort to quantify the climate-change impacts, assess the consequences for food security and estimate the investments that would offset the negative consequences for human well-being.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Dr. Ranjan Das is Associate Professor of Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, Assam. He has obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Agricultural Research Institute. New Delhi in Plant Physiology with specialization in climate change and stress physiology. Earlier Dr. Das worked in the capacity of a scientist in Remote Sensing Application Centre, Guwahati and gathering knowledge in simulation modeling, digital image processing and Geographical information system. After that he joined the Assam Agricultural University and has about 14 years of experience in teaching, research and extension. He has guided many postgraduate students and acted as a resource person in various trainings pertaining to climate change in different institutes all over India. He has also authored and co-authored a few books related to climate change and has numerous publications in national and international Journals. He has been the Zonal Secretary of Indian Society for Plant Physiology (East Zone) since last 6 years. He has worked extensively on crop response to climate change, carbon sequestration, limiting water and production physiology for sustainable development and currently he is handling three different projects related to climate change funded by ICAR and DST.