12 Dec 2017

Patna, December 12. Department of Agriculture in collaboration with Centre for Environment, Energy & Climate Change (CEECC) at ADRI and Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) organized a consultation Workshop on development of Risk Index for Agriculture & Allied Sectors in Bihar, at BAMETI. The workshop was aimed to come out with a relevance level fixation for the agriculture, livestock and agricultural infrastructure. The relevance level scope would lead to the convergence of finding the risk index for the agriculture and its allied sectors. With a view to assessing potential risks to the agricultural sector due to natural disasters and climate variability, the Department of Agriculture, Government of Bihar has entrusted Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre to develop a ‘Climate Inclusive Agriculture Risk Atlas for Bihar’. As a first step, the Atlas is being developed for Supaul district as a pilot for drawing lessons for the larger Risk Atlas for the entire state which is materialized by CEECC at ADRI. The pilot study in Supaul district will focus mainly on risk and vulnerability of the agriculture and allied sectors on account of floods, drought or other Hydro-met hazards leading to potential crop losses, livelihood losses as well as opportunity cost of infrastructure losses among other aspects. The Framework includes a significant component on primary data collection from the field for hazard and vulnerability assessment 

The Introduction remarks was delivered by Professor Prabhat P Ghosh Director of ADRI who stated that Disaster is a very important aspect and initiatives like these need common consensus to deliver and mitigate climate change and Mr. P K Mishra from BAMETI gave an overview of the importance of the Disaster Risk Reduction Road Map and the vulnerability of the agriculture sector. Various experts from the developmental partners and Department of the Agriculture and its allied sectors deliberated on finding a cohesive risk index for the. The valedictory session was graced by Dr. Shaibal Gupta who highlighted that technical innovations are very important and designing of the agriculture risk atlas is first of its kind on a Pan India Basis hence it can imply that what Bihar thinks today, India thinks tomorrow, Dr. Monna Anand from ADPC discussed about the forward steps for the Risk index inclusion and its importance. Shree Arvind Mishra, Joint Director Agriculture stated about the cohesive nature of the agriculture road map and the climate variabilities that stand against the water management issues for agriculture. The workshop was moderated by Dr. Niladri Gupta, from ADPC. The closing remarks were delivered by Dr. Abinash Mohanty from CEECC.