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Kisan Jan Samwad 2008
(Climate change impact on farming, Adaptive measures and policy
implications in Uttar Pradesh)
Uttar Pradesh plays an indispensable
function in Indian agriculture. More than 90 % of the farmers
are small and marginal land holders out of 30.5 million farmer’s
population. With 9 diverse agro climatic
 regions, this state is
quite rich in natural resources which have immense association
with agricultural livelihood. But over a period of few decades,
climatic change extremes like flood and drought have been
emerged as havoc for the farming in various regions.
Particularly, the massive part of eastern Uttar Pradesh and
entire part of Bundelkhand region are the regular victims of
flood and drought events respectively. Changing pattern of
rainfall has been thoroughly observed across the state that has
compelled farmers to get dependent on groundwater for
irrigation. Similarly, decrease in the days of rainfall,
increasing  temperature,
hot winds during winters are some of the observed indicators of
climate change in the regions. Crop production and land
productivity has been intensively decreasing with the cumulative
effect of climate change and disaster. The entire pictures
clearly demonstrate the pathetic situation of farming within the
region. But in spite of such challenges, there are various
examples in the field where farmers are effectively coping up
with climate change only changed their cropping strategies but
have adopted several new crops and new systems of cropping
resilient to hanging climatic conditions. Apart from those
examples there are several
 stresses by using
traditional local knowledge. They have not evidences of right
based approach of the CBOs particularly of women farmers around
the issues of land, farming, food and other livelihood
enterprises in response to climate change impact. These adaptive
strategies of the community to mitigate the loss of climate
change are good in numbers but under shared with other
stakeholders.
Kissan Jan
Samwad of year 2009
was organised by GEAG, in association with SAN UP (sustainable
Agriculture Network of Uttar Pradesh) and LSKM (Laghu Simant
Krishak Morcha) on the issues of
‘Climate change impact on farming , adaptive measures and policy
implications in Uttar Pradesh’
to discuss the
observed climate change impact, potential options of coping up,
and policy implications. The themes of this two days dialogue
was as follows-
-
Climate change impact on framer's
livelihood and food security (mainly in flood and drought
areas) and adaptive strategies of farmers
-
Climate change impact on women farmers
-
Response of government departments on
issues related to climate change
 Small-marginal-landless and women farmers,
struggling with severe problems primarily due to policies and
missed priorities, the climate change related impacts and
uncertainties have seriously added to the problems. At the same
time, small farmers have demonstrated that they have exceptional
adaptive capacities which are spontaneous and self-evolving.
NGOs, academics, decision makers can learn from these farmers
and think to evolve ways and means which are helpful to small
land holders and women farmers both at policy and action levels. Agriculture Minister of the state-
Chowdhary Laxmi Narayan was the chief Guest in the inaugural
session of the dialogue. He announced that state government will
come up with some key programs and strategies on small farmers
in the state. He announced that an advisory board of State
Agriculture has been constituted in which Dr Shiraz A Wajih,
President of GEAG has been included as a member. He assured to
take positive steps on the resolution and outcomes of the
dialogue.
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State Level
Shared Learning Dialogue on ‘Evaluating Disaster Risk
Reduction Activities’-
Disaster Risk Reduction activities are always purposed
to reduce the impact of the disaster focusing on
enhancing coping capacity of community. But most of the
time, executing agency go for hard measures rather than
soft measures. Benefits of these measures are complex to
define but an initiative was taken up by GEAG, WINROCK (WII)
and ISET in this regard. For the purpose of assessing
the cost and benefits of disaster risk reduction
interventions and in order to evaluate it’s
effectiveness, an exercise was organised by GEAG and WII
in Eastern UP and some working papers were developed on
the basis of the obtained results and used
methodologies. To share the outcomes and methodological
part of the study with the multi stakeholders, a Shared
Learning Dialogue was organised by GEAG and Winrock
International at Lucknow in association of Disaster
Management Cell (DMC) of Uttar Pradesh Academy of
Administration and Management of Government of Uttar
Pradesh which is a State Government body on capacity
building and academic
support.
Adaptive Strategies in Flood (National
level SLD)
A two
days shared learning dialogue was organised in 17-18
December 2007 on the issues of community's adaptive
strategies to the flood. Dialogue was organised after
the completion of the research on documenting the local
knowledge and livelihood strategies to cope up with
flood to share the experiences and the methodologies
adopted. This workshop was organised in collaboration
of Winrock International (India) in which the representatives
from ISET, TERI, NIDM, Ekgaon, Oxfam India, Oxfam Novib
and NWCF were present in the dialogue. On this occasion,
Mr Minar Pimple of UN Millennium Campaign was also present.
Representatives from 15 CSOs ( those involved in research)
contributed their active presence in the SLD.
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Crop insurance
Gorakhpur
Environmental Action Group organized a state level workshop
on status of crop insurance in Uttar Pradesh, the problems
in its effective implementation and the possibilities
for its widespread implications. The workshop was organized
at Krishi Sahakari Prashikshan Sansthan; Lucknow dated
15-16 June, 2007.
During the workshop,
several sessions were focused over the discussions on
different crop insurance schemes and their impacts.
The conditions and the system of crop cutting etc. were
also discussed at the workshop. It was also discussed
why the farmers of Uttar Pradesh are unable to get the
benefits of crop insurance.
The following
were the main reasons for the failure of crop insurance
in Uttar Pradesh:
- 95% farmers are unaware
of the crop insurance scheme.
- Only 2% farmers know
about crop insurance scheme.
- Only 3% farmers have
taken benefit of crop insurance.
- At the end of the
workshop, several recommendations for the extension
of crop insurance scheme were stated and filed by
different key speakers.
Capacity Building of SAN UP members
An
orientation cum capacity building program was organised
by GEAG for the members of SAN UP on the issue of Climate
Change Impact and Sustainable Agriculture. This capacity
building event was organised initially for the regional
committee's members of SAN UP which will be followed
by a series of trainings for remaining members.
Regional Consultations
Under EJ Campaign, 5 regional consultations
were organised with the SAN UP members to assess the
regional issues and impact of Climate Change in Uttar
Pradesh. Consultations were held in Eastern UP (Gorakhpur),
Bundelkhand ( Mahoba), Vindhya region ( Ghazipur), Central
UP ( Faizabad) and Ruhelkhand ( Shahjahanpur).
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the Report,
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