(Item 3 of the Agenda)
10. Sanjay K SRIVASTAVA, Deputy Project Director, Indian Space Research Organization, made a presentation on what can be done to “mainstream” sustainable agriculture into development projects and programme, based on the strategy and experiences of India. He pointed out that despite India’s remarkable progress towards achieving food security, vulnerability to natural disasters has increased significantly. He suggested ecological (farming systems, soil and water conservation), financial (funding, risk transfer, insurance), social (safety nets, food for work programme) and techno-legal (warning systems, regulation, coding) approaches towards risk reduction, with a rank priority of “ecology over insurance, insurance over relief, and incentive over regulation”. He suggested the following approaches to integrate risk reduction strategy and sustainable agriculture:
strengthen community-centric approaches.
11. Giasuddin AHMED, National Project Director, Ministry of Agriculture, noted Bangladesh’s vulnerability to floods, cyclones and drought, and recent paradigm changes in the overall disaster management strategy which now place more focus on mitigation and preparedness. He observed that deficiencies in warning systems limited their effective utilization, and suggested that localization of warning messages would improve this situation. He highlighted the country’s efforts on comprehensive disaster management planning, with detailed flood plain hazard zoning, flood forecasting, early warning, disaster coping cropping pattern development and a results-focused research and development effort. He suggested that a website with updated climate data, plus river height and speed of the current at different locations, would be helpful in the development of early warning messages.
12. LIU Lihua, Division of Agriculture Information, Ministry of Agriculture, presented data on the upward trends of major disasters like drought, floods, storms and extreme cold damage in China, and their impacts on the acreage and food production in the country. She highlighted the various steps for the short term (emergency programme) as well as the long term (prevention, mitigation and research in biotechnology) that the Government of China had implemented to mitigate damage from these hazards. She spelt out the willingness of the Government of China to share the expertise and experiences with neighboring countries, especially in the areas of disaster monitoring and prevention.
13. Shobar WIGANDA, Director, Food Surveillance Center, Ministry of Agriculture, presented the concept and overall objectives of the Food Insecurity Atlas (FIA) of Indonesia. He emphasized that the FIA was based on the indicators capturing the themes: (i) food availability, (ii) food and livelihood access, (iii) food consumption, health and nutrition, and (iv) environmental sustainability/food vulnerability. He suggested that chronic food insecurity could be a manifestation of food availability, food/livelihoods access and food consumption/health/nutrition and said that Food Vulnerability, measured by four indicators (percentage area without forest, percent of severely crop damage’s area, percentage of villages affected by flood and landslide and rainfall deviation), caused transient food insecurity. He listed the consultative processes while preparing the FIA and noted its usefulness to the stakeholders at various levels. He suggested that an FIA-based strategy to identify food insecurity and disaster vulnerability would help in mainstreaming disaster risk management in sustainable agricultural practice.
14. Krishna Bahadur SHRESTHA, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Cooperatives (MAC), outlined disaster (earthquake, floods, landslide and drought) vulnerability in Nepal and the efforts of the government to address them. He listed some recent initiatives such as preparing a disaster relief implementation manual, establishing a disaster management cell in the MAC, creating working groups for disaster management and mobilizing resources towards post-disaster relief in terms of supplying seeds and other agricultural inputs. He observed that lack of early warning systems and critical mass in terms of disaster management specialists and institutional infrastructure constrained the capacity of the country to manage these disasters efficiently. He felt the need to have remote sensing based risk analysis programmes to support the endeavours of government to address food insecurity and disaster vulnerability. He also stressed that it was necessary to allocate funds (revolving) that could be used when needed to supplement buffer stocks of seed. He stressed the value of managing the Chure hills scientifically so that flooding to the terai that extended into bordering India could be minimized.
15. Kraisorn WIRIYA, Chief, Huay Kakaeng Forest Fire Research Center, discussed forest fire vulnerability in Thailand and listed the variety of fire conditions experienced, such as surface, crown and semi-ground, as well as their various causes. He also spelt out the strategy of government to establish fire control systems in risk prone areas, as well as to increase public education and awareness. He highlighted the impact of forest fires on agricultural lands, especially in terms of increased soil erosion and water turbidity.
16. Citing various case studies Thierry FACON, FAO Senior Water Management Officer, noted that integrated farming systems approaches, watershed management, agro-forestry, reforestation of watersheds, community-based disaster mitigation, improvement of irrigation efficiency, soil and water conservation were often recommended and implemented for the mitigation of floods and droughts. While these measures could be effective in certain circumstances, he noted that they were often based on a wrong understanding of the processes at work and as a result might not contribute to the mitigation goals, or might affect downstream populations. He questioned the long-term sustainability of agricultural systems that rely on high labor inputs and provide subsistence level only, in the face of rapid economic development and strong urban pull. He suggested that the latter trends threatened the positive externalities of these systems in drought and flood mitigation. He therefore recommended that a better understanding of land-water and upstream-downstream linkages and increased cooperation between local communities, policy makers and modelers should be promoted to ensure that effective flood and drought mitigating strategies are adopted, along with strategic planning and management and adaptive strategies at all levels. He suggested that scientific assessment combined with participatory appraisal and planning were important elements of project implementation. He also proposed the following approach:
conjunctive surface and ground water use.
