Experts foresee fundamental shift in tackling climate change
Expressing concerns over increase in the recent monsoon patterns, increasing temperature and extreme weather events in the country, experts from different sectors stressed the need to explore strategies to mitigate the risks of climate change at the session on ‘Why the monsoon has been raining woes over the last few years’ at the businessline Agri and Commodity Summit 2025 titled ‘Shaping agriculture and agri-business in a changing climate’ in New Delhi on Friday.
Referring to 2024 being the warmest year, DS Pai, Scientist G, IMD, said no significant rainfall trend can be seen over the country in the last 125 years. Despite not showing any important trend, extreme rainfall events are increasing, particularly over the central part of India and along the West Coast and Northeast.
The North-East, which gets maximum rainfall, is showing a decreasing trend. Since the region is getting a lot of rain, this is not affecting. Interestingly, Northwest India, including Rajasthan, is witnessing increasing trend of rainfall.
Max and min temps up
He said long time series of temperature from 1901-2024 shows that both maximum and minimum temperatures are showing significant trend. Now, both maximum as well as minimum temperature have seen a significant increase. Pai said all these aspects have got a significant impact on the agriculture.
Stating that there have been record levels of greenhouse gases just after Covid, he said development activities and a lot of deforestation are causing this. Deforestation is becoming a feedback kind of thing whereby there are more and more greenhouse gases.
Stating that climate change is real, Ajai Rana, Chairman, FSII and CEO, Savannah Seeds, said carbon dioxide concentration in atmosphere has gone up significantly over the years and so is methane emission. Apart from industries, agriculture is also responsible for this increase in green house gas emissions.
Giving the example of rice crop, he said the use of chemical fertilizers, especially urea, leads to release of nitrous oxide. They absorb more heat in the climate leading to increase in temperature. The oceans are becoming warmer and that is leading to the change in monsoon patterns.
On the impact of changes in rainfall patterns, he said the late rains at the time of flowering and seed setting lead to more diseases and insects and lead to drop in productivity.
Short-period rainfall
Nabansu Chattopadhyay, Director, Agricultural Meteorology Division, WMO, said the district level data show Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and eastern parts of UP witnessing lower rainfall over the years.
Stating that signal is clear, he said if we are not taking these as a benchmark now, then it will be not very supportive for the agriculture
Projections are also mentioning that there will be 4-16 per cent of increase in rainfall. The most important part is that this rainfall is very short period rainfall. This will impact agriculture production, Chattopadhyay said.
Speaking at the session, Neha Kumar, Head, South Asia Programme, Climate Bonds Initiative, said RBI had recently asked 15 banks to conduct an exercise on food risk to see how much of their assets are actually exposed to that. Agriculture lending forms part of priority sector lending and all banks have exposure to agriculture lending. Climate element of agriculture is still not factored into either the practices that need to be followed for farming or the lending or the investment practices.
Fundamental shift in tackling
She emphasized the need for science, policy, economics and finance to come together for robust agricultural productivity of the country.
She said that more and more banks are hiring climate scientists. “There is going to be a fundamental shift in how you will tackle climate change, especially from the agri point of view,” she said.
Touching upon inflation, she said food inflation was in the region of 2.9 or something until 2020. After that it has doubled. The usual demand supply production consumption metrics to determine price are no longer following a predictable pattern, climate change has become an endemic source of disruption, and that is also causing sort of persistent food inflation, she said.
Subramani Ra Mancombu of businessline moderated the session.
The businessline Agri and Commodity Summit 2025 is presented by Nabard and co-powered by Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSSI) in association with Yara.
The Associate Partners are NCDEX, Indofil, Bayer, Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Ltd, Kribhco Agri, NSE, Aqua Group and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The Banking Partner is State Bank of India while the Broadcast Partner is NDTV Profit.