Speakers at a webinar on climate extremes, economic loss and farmer resilience have called for redefining the existing methodologies to assess loss and damage due to climate extreme events.
The two-day webinar was organised jointly by Kerala Agricultural University and the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, Mumbai at College of Agriculture, Vellanikkara. It discussed the major issues in this regard under four themes such as climate extremes and economic loss in agriculture and livelihood impact; climate resilience in agriculture – adaptation and mitigation strategies; and revisiting the methods to assess economic loss due to extreme climate events.
Kavi Kumar, Professor, Madras School of Economics, Chennai said that a huge insurance gap exists between the developed and developing countries with almost 51 per cent of the climate-based losses under insurance coverage in developed countries, while only 10 per cent in developing countries.
Hence, more customised insurance instruments for climate risk transfers considering mutuality, solidarity and accountability have to be designed.
Sreenath Dixit, Principal Scientist & Cluster Lead, ICRISAT Development Centre, discussed the success stories of alternate methods for location specific and cost-effective landscape research management strategies popularised by ICRISAT for soil and water conservation.
Shyam S Salim, Principal Scientist, CIFT, Cochin discussed the adaptive resilience lessons in the marine fisheries sector for combating climate change.
There were also discussions on different tools and methods to assess climate change, post disaster loss and damage assessment in agriculture.