South Asia is vulnerable to a variety of hydrometeorological hazards, which are often crossboundary in nature. Climate change is expected to influence many of these hazards. Thus, climate-related risks over South Asia make disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) key policy goals. Recently there is an increasing consensus that DRR including CCA should be embedded in development planning. Disaster risk reduction including CCA has progressively gained importance in global governance. Across South Asia, however, such integration is only in a preliminary stage. This review was to assess the existing status and scope of DRR including CCA in development projects across South Asia, so that an effective and achievable deliberation may be made to regional policymakers. A total of 371 projects relevant to CCA and DRR were reviewed. The project inventory was diverse in nature with respect to location, scale, sectoral focus, and strategic importance. Bangladesh, India, and Bhutan were observed to be proactive in implementing DRR-and CCA-related projects. Meta-analysis of the project inventory suggests an urgent need for an individual and collaborative convergence of processes for DRR and CCA through policies, plans, strategies, and programs.
Sugarcane is a cash crop in Uttar Pradesh; economic condition of the farmers is highly dependent on sugarcane production. However, average yield of the state has gone up from 39.5 t/ha (1950-51) to 59.2 t/ha (2009-10), was observed associated with fluctuating weather conditions, whereas other major sugar producing area in India have average yield of 70 t/ha. The result of the above study showed that there was an average rising trend in the annual minimum temperature (0.03° Cyr-1) over all the agro-climatic zones of the state. Out of nine agro-climatic zones, four zones namely South Western Zone, Central Plain Zone, Western Plain Zone and Eastern Plain zone, which were marked by decreasing annual rainfall trend. However, Vindhyan Zone, Mid Western Zone and Bhabhar and Tarai Zone show rising trend. To explain better relation between cane yield and weather parameters this study also show that maximum, minimum temperature and moisture plays the most important role during germination, tillering, grand growth and ripening phases of the sugarcane. Considering extreme weather, we found that temperature below 25 °C, above 35 °C and 40 °C are slowing down the growth and finally reducing the final yield. It is also noticed that temperature and rainfall extremes had high possibility of governing sugarcane yields but there were also quite a number of instances wherein the extremes couldn’t be reasoned directly for the yield fluctuations. Therefore, to sustain the productivity, this study recommends the improvements of the adoptive responses of varieties, management of the risk associated with extreme weather events by providing weather linked value-added advisory services to the farmers and crop insurance agencies.
Present study evaluates the vegetation responses towards the rainfall variability in the Gomati basin during 1901-2015. To accomplish the same, high resolution observed daily gridded rainfall data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) was analysed using non-parametric trend test. The long-term rainfall showed significant decreasing trend (α=0.05) which varied from -0.96 to -4.89 per year. Identified trends in rainfall were then evaluated in tandem with the basin-wide changes in the vegetation signatures during the recent extreme years (two pairs of dry and wet years). Each pair of extreme years was assessed for its seasonal Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) related to the seasonal rainfall variations with special emphasis to rice and wheat yields (major crops). Contribution of spatio-temporal occurrences of rainy days with that of the heavy rainfall events was also analysed. The findings suggest that the prevalent basin-wide longterm rainfall deficiency intensified during the extreme dry years e.g. 2002 and 2009 and impacted the health of vegetation in the basin. Vegetation of the basin was found closely related with rainfall variability; regular and well distributed occurrences of rainy days benefited the basin's vegetation as well as the yields of rice and wheat crops.
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