Poor households globally lose 5% of their total income in an average year from heat stress and 4.4% from floods compared with households that are relatively better off, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said in a report on Wednesday, warning about the negative impacts of climate change on the farming population in India.
Senior FAO economist Nicholas Sitko presented the report “The unjust climate. Measuring the impacts of climate change on rural poor, women, and youth” in New Delhi.
The report said on-farm income sources of the rural poor in India were affected in different ways depending on the type of climate stress. In case of droughts or such events, poor households dedicated more time and resources to agricultural production to sustain themselves, as off- farm employment opportunities reduced.
The total incomes of poor households reduce compared with those of families that have not been exposed to a significant climate stressor, it said. “The vulnerability of poor households to climate stressors is likely to be rooted in structural inequalities,”
he report said and asked the government to take policy measures such as expanding the social security net.
Anticipatory social protection programmes can be scaled up and scaled out to more beneficiaries in anticipation of an extreme weather event, the report suggested. “Providing effective livelihood support ahead of extreme weather events can help reduce reliance on adverse coping strategies and limit the number of people pushed into poverty because of these events,” it said. The report recommended improving workforce diversification and enhancing off-farm employment opportunities. It urged policymakers to address “gendered barriers” in non-farm employment.
Responding to the report, NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand said India was doing its best to deal with the issue of climate change. “We have implemented National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) much earlier to address the problem of climate change. We were first in the world to do so for all crops. We also have a contingency plan for all agriculture districts. We were the first country to implement an employment guarantee scheme as a social safety net,” he said.