Exploitation of nature resulted in climate change: Dr Kaushal

Climate change related problems like flood, cyclone, drought, aberrant weather, global warming are the results of human efforts to use and mould the climate as per their need and suitability, said Dr Parvinder Kaushal, Vice Chancellor, Birsa Agricultural University (BAU). Even small change in climate leads to emergence of new diseases, pests and weeds of crops requiring development of new strategies to control them. 

Dr Kaushal was addressing a daylong regional workshop on ‘Alternate agricultural production pathways in changing climate’, organised jointly by BAU and the Centre for Environment Science and Climate Resilient Agriculture (CESCRA) of Indian Agricultural Research (IARI), New Delhi at BAU on Tuesday.

Traditional water management expert Simon Oraon said that water bodies like wells, ponds, dams and rivers are the real temple, mosque and church for us which provide support to our life system all the 365 days. “Continued pollution and destruction of the natural resources gifted to us by God has resulted in climate change related problems. We have set up factories for producing currency but water and farm produce cannot be manufactured in factories. We all will have to join hands to protect the mother earth, the forests, wild life, water resources, traditional crop varieties and native breeds of livestock to effectively face the challenges post by changing climate,” the recipient of Padma Shree award stated

Swami Bhaveshanand, Secretary of Ramakrishna Mission said that the need of the hour is to protect and popularize the eco-friendly farming system in practice in India. “For quality and sustainability, we will have to go for high yielding varieties in place of hybrid varieties and indigenous cattle breed like Sahiwal, Gir, Gangatiri etc instead of Jersey and Holstein Frisian,” he added.

Dr S Naresh Kumar, Principal Scientist, IARI, New Delhi said that main objective of the workshop was to delineate the current state of agricultural production system in the region, discuss the development of alternate production systems in current and future climates and identify opportunities and constraints for achieving alternate production systems. “Indian agriculture needs to be looked from the perspective of improving farm productivity, sustaining the natural resources, protecting the environmental balance, improving the nutritional security and enhancing the living standards of farm families. Climate change poses immense challenge to all these goals necessitating development of alternate production pathways for agriculture which can meet the national and international demands as well as achieve sustainable development goals,” Kumar said.

Dr Raghav Thakur, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, Dr Abdul Wadood, Chairman, Dept of Agricultural Meteorology and Earth Science, Dr BK Jha, BAU Coordinator of the project and Dr Niva Bara, Head, Dept of Extension Education also participated in the deliberations.