Prioritizing Land and Water Interventions for Climate‐smart Villages

Abstract

Climate‐smart villages mean implementing a portfolio of best locally suited climate‐smart agricultural practices in an integrated manner to build resilience of the local community. Land and water interventions form a crucial part of a climate‐smart agricultural practices portfolio, with water availability being the key limiting factor of crop growth. To aid in this decision‐making process of prioritizing land and water interventions, a simple and robust spreadsheet tool based on a water balance is developed. The tool integrates and simulates impacts of land and water interventions on the water balance to determine their impact across climate‐smart agricultural objectives of agricultural productivity, climate change adaptation and mitigation. The tool was implemented in two villages in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The tool performs well in simulating village water balance and its impact on the yield of rainfed and irrigated crop areas. Results show that considerable differences exist within the portfolio of land and water interventions, with only a combination of supply, demand and moisture conservation practices being able to help achieve climate‐smart agricultural objectives. In the best case scenario, yield can be increased by up to 10% and greenhouse gas emission intensity reduced up to 17%. Comparison with stakeholder perception analysis highlights the utility of this tool in providing additional quantitative information in the decision‐making process. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Prioritizing farm management interventions to improve climate change adaptation and mitigation outcomes—a case study for banana plantations

“…Only a few studies report on methods and approaches that provide rapid quantitative impact analyses (Alam and Sikka 2019 ). Alam and Sikka ( 2019 ) demonstrated the use of a simple spreadsheet tool based on the water balance to prioritize 10 land and water interventions in two villages of Madhya Pradesh, India.…”

“…Only a few studies report on methods and approaches that provide rapid quantitative impact analyses (Alam and Sikka 2019 ). Alam and Sikka ( 2019 ) demonstrated the use of a simple spreadsheet tool based on the water balance to prioritize 10 land and water interventions in two villages of Madhya Pradesh, India. Our approach offers a more participatory alternative that includes feedback from relevant stakeholders during the process of building the graphical impact pathways as well as during model implementation.…”

Agricultural water management practices to improve the climate resilience of irrigated agriculture in India

“…A range of decision support tools and prioritization frameworks have been developed (Andrieu et al, 2017; Brandt et al, 2017; Dunnett et al, 2018; Khatri‐Chhetri et al, 2019; Mwongera et al, 2017; Shirsath et al, 2017). These tools and frameworks are mostly developed to assess and identify portfolios of climate‐smart agricultural practices (Van Wijk et al, 2020), in which AWM practices form a critical and significant part (Alam & Sikka, 2019). A detailed overview and evaluation of existing tools and frameworks used for prioritization is given by Van Wijk et al (2020).…”

“…The water balance‐based approach presented is a data‐/model‐based prioritization approach. This approach focuses on the quantitative impact analysis of interventions to prioritize climate‐smart interventions (Alam & Sikka, 2019). This approach was developed to present a simple and robust method that has limited data requirements, since current approaches are data intensive and involve subject matter expertise, including the use of crop models and production functions (Dunnett et al, 2018; Shirsath et al, 2017).…”

“…To evaluate and prioritize AWM practices based on their impact on resource (water) availability, Alam and Sikka (2019) developed in a separate study a simple, easily replicable, and conceptually robust water balance tool for implementing interventions. This tool is spreadsheet based and has minimum data requirements to make it easy for users.…”