Brace for sizzling winters: Report

India, which witnessed 0.4 degrees Celsius increase in temperature in the last century, saw a temperature increase of 0.7 degrees in the pre-winter period and 0.67 during winter, a parliamentary standing committee told Lok Sabha recently, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 1, 2009, 01:15:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Get ready to face hot winters, which can lead to fall in wheat and rice production, with pre-winter and winter temperature in India rising the most in the last century.

India, which witnessed 0.4 degrees Celsius increase in temperature in the last century, saw a temperature increase of 0.7 degrees in the pre-winter period and 0.67 during winter, a parliamentary standing committee told Lok Sabha recently. The least temperature increase was during monsoons followed by summers.

It was the plains of northern, central and western India, which recorded maximum temperature increase in India whereas regions in Kashmir and parts of southern India recorded a fall in average yearly temperature, the report said.

With increase in temperature, the report recorded, central India and western India and Kerala have recorded a fall in monsoon rainfall of six to eight per cent.

Only in the western coastal states of Andhra Pradesh, higher rainfall during monsoon has been recorded.

The temperature in India is expected to rise by three to six degree Celsius by end of 2100, the report said, it can lead to fall in production of wheat by four to five million tonnes for one degree Celsius rise in temperature.

For rice, which contributes about 23 per cent of green house gas (GHG) emission from agriculture sector, the production is estimated to fall by 20 per cent, the report said. Agriculture sector contributes 28 per cent of India’s total burden of GHGs.

India’s wheat and rice production should almost double by end of the century to meet the domestic demand, said a recent Food and Agriculture Organisation report.

Higher temperature will have huge impact on animal husbandry with annual milk production expected to fall by 1.8 million tonnes by 2020, about two per cent of present production, and 15 million by 2050. “The cattle loss will be highest in Uttar Pradesh followed by Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and West Bengal,” the report said, while pointing out that it would mean loss of Rs 2,661 crore.

The scientific findings on impact of climate change on Indian agriculture caused the committee to recommend that each village in India should have a “climate risk manager” to assist people in adopting climate friendly technologies.

It also asked the government to make climate change mitigation an integral part of all government polices including Bharat Nirman and give financial incentive to farmers to adopt energy efficient technologies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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