National Resource Management For Enhancement Of Adaption and Mitigation Potential Under Changing Climate

Abstract

Dependency on weather in agricultural operations is the main limitation of the farmers of the North Eastern region. Though importance is given on rain water harvesting and recycling through various schemes and programs of central and state Govts., those are having limited performances and crops are still subjected to mid-season vagaries of nature. Besides, the inherent resource poorness of the farmers have made them shy to stay away from improved agricultural technologies owing to dependency on external market for the inputs, which are generally costly and high maintenance costs. The region is already a recognized very sensitive ecosystem and any imbalance in the natural and production processes is likely to hamper the normal livelihood and food security. Under such circumstances and governed by the principles of adaptation to natural changes and mitigation of the harmful cause and effects of rapid global climate change, the Govt. of India introduced a new research scheme, called National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) to safe guard the interest of the common farming community. The ICAR RC NEH Region is also an important partner of this national flagship program on climate change. Since 2010-11 under the theme area of basic and strategic research in natural resource management, crop improvement, livestock and fishes new state of the art technologies have been tested in the institute and ones proven suitable they have been released systematically for adoption by the farmers. The main scope and objective of researches carried out under the aegis of NICRA are to enhance the potential of the farmers for adaptation and mitigation of the adverse affects of climate change. While achieving the ultimate goal to reach to the farmers, there is a constant need to up date the coworkers involved in the same line about the new technologies/interventions and about the state of the art infrastructures raised for research purposes. This serves the purpose of confidence building among them and helps in coming out with new innovative ideas of practical importance. The climate change challenges can be tackled only with the active participation of different stakeholders of the society. That invites the necessity to compile important perspectives on the regional developments in climate change research and policies and thus can help in the pooling of regional resources to address the threats and challenges. Keeping in view of the above facts this book has been brought out to bring familiarity with state of the art research technologies/interventions/innovations and dissemination of the recent scientific advances in the field of soil, plant and water management to enhance adaptation and mitigation potential of farmers of North Eastern Hill Region in the backdrop of climate change.