Improving the Resilience of Agriculture to Climate Change Risks in SAARC Countries

The South Asian nations have vibrant agrarian economies with a significant proportion of their populations dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. These countries have made significant progress in developing the agriculture policy environment though slowly through concerted actions over the years as a result of which they have increasingly become food self-sufficient and food secure. However, the climate change risks these countries are facing can threaten this progress and their future. While countries have made progress in areas related to agricultural technology development and to a certain extent their diffusion, the problem isn’t limited to the scale. The new challenges brought by climate change mean calls for more radical solutions that the countries have not tried and tested so far. There is a need for strengthening the climate risk management in the agrarian sector in the region and it goes beyond the developing drought and flood-resistant crops and cropping systems and takes a holistic perspective that could mean thinking beyond boundaries and sectoral focus. It also means countries need to test new means of developing high-quality data that can be efficiently shared for enabling the development of solutions by a variety of stakeholders liberating and bringing in the data democracy in the region. With growing regional integration, the countries also need to build trust in regional cooperation and strengthen regional adaptation plans. This chapter has provided a necessary framework to enable such regional cooperation in the SAARC region.