Climate resilience of peri- urban agriculture in Kerala : a farming system based assessment

Abstract

The study entitled ‘Climate resilience of peri-urban agriculture in Kerala: A farming system-based assessment’ was conducted from 2019 to 2023 and focused on the climate resilience of peri-urban agriculture in Kerala. The primary objectives were developing the Climate Resilience Index (CRI) for the Agro- Ecological Units (AEUs) of Alappuzha, Palakkad, and Kannur districts, identifying the dimensions of roles played by various developmental departments/institutions in building climate resilience, exploring current impediments in implementation of climate change mitigation measures in agriculture and propose suggestions to overcome the same. The study was conducted in the peri-urban areas of 13 AEUs of Alappuzha, Palakkad, and Kannur districts. From peri-urban areas of each AEU, affected farmers were identified and listed in consultation with officials. From the prepared list, 30 farmers were selected at random. Also, from each district, 20 extension personnel were selected randomly. Thus, a total of 450 respondents comprising 390 farmers and 60 extension personnel were selected for the study. Climate resilience was expressed as the function of the three core dimensions- absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities. Each dimension was studied under five factors viz. physical, environmental/ecological, social, economic, and psychological factors. The absorptive capacity index has been constructed using 31 indicators, adaptive capacity index using 18 indicators, and transformative capacity index using 23 indicators. Thus, a total of 72 indicators were selected for the development of CRI. The procedure for calculating the CRI comprised four steps considering the assumed relationship to climate resilience, normalizing data for comparison, aggregating the indicators across each dimension, and computation of the index.