Peer review

Globally, climatic stress is increasing in frequency and negatively impacts agricultural production. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) emerged as an approach to build resilience against climatic shocks and ensure food security. Climate-smart agriculture blends productivity, resilience, and mitigation goals in climate action. This study constructs an outcome-based composite CSA indicator and combines it with climate risk profiles to evaluate relative scores for policy targeting in India. The results indicate the coldspots (high CSA scores) for CSA scores are primarily located in Indo-Gangetic plain zone and the southern peninsula of India. Our study shows the prevalence of better CSA scores, despite high exposure to climatic risk compared to other regions. Our spatial cluster or hotspot analysis indicates an association between climatic risk and low CSA hotspots (low CSA scores) in semi-arid and eastern India. This approach enables policymakers to streamline productivity enhancement policies and prioritise adaptation in similar agro-ecologies. Integrating the CSA index and climate risk profiles can be a helpful spatial planning tool for policy targeting. It not only helps in targeting the intervention of the area but also helps to build the climate risk analogues from which one can learn.

Text in English

Bora, K. : Not in IRS staff list but CIMMYT Affiliation

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)