District-level data necessary to understand climate risks: P.K. Mishra

According to a Hindustan Times report, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister P.K. Mishra said on Wednesday that forging close coordination among scientific research, reliable data and policymaking is imperative to tackle the challenges posed by climate change to agriculture, food security and nutrition.

Addressing the inaugural session of the 20th annual conference of the Environment for Development (EfD) network at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode, P.K. Mishra emphasized that India must strengthen the availability and use of district-level data to anticipate climate risks beforehand, so that agricultural and food security policies can be made more effective according to local conditions.

He further stated that national and state-level average information is important, but it does not always reflect ground-level differences and data must be precise enough to capture local variations. Merely having more data is not enough, but information needs to be timely, reliable, comparable and useful in decision-making.

On producing deeper and district-level insightful results that reflect local variations in climatic conditions, P.K. Mishra stressed combining administrative records, household surveys, satellite imagery and geospatial data.

Referring to an assessment carried out under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture program, he stated that out of 651 agricultural districts in the country, 310 districts are extremely or very highly vulnerable to climate change.

Stating that climate change has a direct bearing on economic growth, agricultural productivity, water availability, food security, public health and livelihood, he added that people must have affordable, diverse and nutritious diets and climate-related changes can affect the availability and affordability of pulses, fruits, vegetables and milk.

Speaking about global cooperation, he said that Global South countries are facing common challenges like climate instability, pressure on natural resources and the need for food security. These challenges are not limited to any single country, therefore data, research, policy experiences and successful approaches should be exchanged to develop solutions suited to local conditions.

He also stated that India's targets of becoming a developed nation by the year 2047 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2070 must be balanced with economic growth, poverty alleviation and improvement in the standard of living.

Notably, the EfD network is a global group of environmental economics research centers, which works to connect research on environmental and development challenges with policymaking.