Policy and practice for building climate-resilient agricultural systems, India
Climate-Resilient Agriculture Policy in India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66529/agripat.2026...33Keywords:
India, climate-resilient agriculture, NICRA, NMSA, NAPCC, NAPAbstract
In India, as in many other developing nations, climate change is increasingly contributing to productivity crises among smallholder farming communities that rely heavily on climate-sensitive resources for their livelihoods. Erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and more frequent extreme weather events such as floods and droughts are intensifying production risks and undermining yield stability. These weather-related shocks further aggravate long-standing structural challenges, including environmental contamination from excessive agrochemical use, declining soil health, water scarcity, and public health concerns, while simultaneously suppressing already fragile rural income levels. Incremental and piecemeal interventions have proven insufficient to reverse these trends or build meaningful resilience. Although many of the technical solutions required for healthier, more efficient, and climate-resilient agricultural systems such as climate-smart practices, improved water management, and sustainable input use are well established and widely discussed, the enabling policy frameworks necessary for scaling these solutions remain inadequate. The policy landscape is highly fragmented, dispersed across multiple ministries and departments with overlapping mandates, weak coordination mechanisms, and inconsistent priorities. In addition, critical research components, particularly interdisciplinary and applied research, are underdeveloped or poorly integrated into policymaking. This results in a complex and disjointed system in which individual policy initiatives operate in isolation and fail to reinforce one another. Nevertheless, several recent and anticipated policy innovations offer promise, provided they are coherently aligned, sufficiently funded, and effectively implemented at scale.
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