Punjab govt to set up climate change cell to cope with weather vagaries
ISLAMABAD: The Punjab government will establish a climate change extension cell in the Department of Agriculture by June 2018, informed sources said.
The provincial government will increase public investment in climate smart agriculture and allocate additional funds to promote adaptation to climate change in agriculture.
The Punjab Agricultural Research Board has submitted a list of climate change projects to the government and it is hoped that the PARB will work on these projects across the province.
At the same time, the agricultural department has prepared sustainable and climate change resilience projects focusing on the development of climate-resilient varieties of crop and crop improvement through better practices and agronomic interventions.
In addition, the provincial government is making efforts through extension advisory services to provide area- and crop-specific weather conditions that will lessen adverse affects of sudden change in weather on crops.
A Climate Change Research Centre is already working in Ayub Agriculture Research Institute, Faisalabad.
Poor peasants are more vulnerable to climate change impacts and according to official data 13.3 million people in Punjab have been classified as vulnerable to falling in and out of poverty because of a small income shock. Creating climate change resilience for this segment of the population is, therefore, essential, the World Bank says in a report.
The environmental problems faced by the agriculture sector in Punjab include water-logging and salinity, soil degradation, insufficient drainage and degraded rangelands. The World Bank says that Punjab’s natural resources and agriculture are under stress for many reasons.
Most of its environmental problems arise from poor agricultural practices like imbalanced use of fertiliser, overuse of pesticides, wasteful use of irrigation water, use of untreated wastewater for irrigation, burning of crop residues; poor management of water, including prices, poor management and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure; weak law enforcement; a large stock of low-yield livestock; and lack of appropriate technology application.
Moreover, climate change has brought new challenges associated with changes in rainfall and temperature as well as extreme and unexpected events.
There are an estimated 5.25 million farms in Punjab, of which 82 per cent are cultivated by owners while the rest are farmed either by owners along with tenants (8.5 per cent), or by tenants alone (9 per cent).
Of the total farms, an overwhelming 92 per cent are classified as small farms of less than two hectares, while medium farms (2 to 10 hectares) account for 6 per cent of all farms and the rest consist of large farms.
In terms of area, small farms (less than 2 hectares) account for only 58 per cent of the total farmland, while large farms (more than 10 hectares) cover almost a quarter of the total available farmland. In effect, land distribution in the province is heavily skewed, with an estimated 2.4 per cent of farmers owning almost a quarter of the total farmland, the World Bank report says.
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