Pakistan needs to ensure human adaptability, farmers’ empowerment to tackle climate change: Dr Adil Najum
The international and local experts at high level consultative plenary on Tuesday emphasised that amid whooping impacts of climate change on the agriculture sector empowerment of the farmers and human adaptability to adverse impacts of environmental degradation is critical to ensure robustness instead resilience beyond buzzwords of digitalization and AI-based agri revolution.
The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) under its flagship 27th Sustainable Conference 2024 organized with the collaboration of the Ministry of Climate Change organized the consultative plenary titled “Developing Resilient Food Systems: Climate Change, Regenerative Agriculture and Digital Innovation”.
Dr Kashif Majeed Salik, Research Fellow, SDPI while setting the agenda informed the speakers that the plenary was intended to stocktake climate change impacts on agriculture sector and gauge food security crisis in the country.
Dr Adil Najam, Professor and Dean Emeritus, Boston University in his keynote address said the agriculture transformation and its digitalization were serious issues that demanded thorough attention of the quarters concerned.
He pointed that the globally vogue terms of agriculture digitization, AI revolution and climate finance were misleading concepts that were projected as the only solution to the ensure climate resilience whereas it required a smart distinction between genuine and misleading instruments boosted at the international level.
Dr Najam also termed resilience as the foundation and not the whole of the system to brace worst disasters and environmental degradation but rather robustness was the optimum required in the strategy interface.
“Climate Change is not a risk but rather an opportunity to promote inclusive and sustainable solutions to the risks to the agriculture sector. Its crucial to ensure respect for the farmers and empower them to adapt to environmental degradation as they are well aware than any literate individual about impacts of climate change in the region,” he said.
Dr Fuad Imran Khan, Chief Commercial Officer, Concave AGRI said his organisation was working on bio fertilizers and coated fertilizers whereas the sulphur coated urea helped gain 100 per cent yield in rice crop during tests and trials.
He termed that cooperatives have a significant role in scaling up usage and access to modern agricultural technology.
Mustafa Yousaf said globally cutting edge technology to detect crop diseases and preventive strategies whereas it also provides proactive weather forecast to the farmers.
He added that climate adaptation was a slow process but once the farmers were convinced with credible data than they would expedite it proactively.
Kazim Saeed, Chief Executive Officer, Pakistan Agricultural Coalition (PAC), Karachi said regenerative farming had emerged almost two decades back as an alternate to pesticide-based crop cultivation.
He advocated that economic incentives could bring the desired change of bringing farmers closer to climate smart and adaptive agriculture practices.
Waqar Ahmad, Head of Corporate Affairs & Sustainability, Nestlé Pakistan said his organisation globally was investing in research institutions to facilitate proactive and innovative research in the agriculture sector to devise most modern solutions to the challenging risk of climate change that was facilitating some 4,000 research institutions and numerous scientists in this realm.
Zafar Masud, President and CEO, The Bank of Punjab said the country’s climate vulnerability, unpredictable rain and water cycles, financial and digital exclusion, and soil degradation were taking a heavy toll on agriculture sector’s productivity.
He pointed that Kissan Card which is a complete digital solution of extending finance to small farmers had helped in inducting 74.9 per cent first time women farmers among them 75.3 per cent owned five-acre or below land.
The initiative, he said had helped in initiating the empowerment of the farmers’ community as 17 per cent new farmers were added to the industry through this facility.
Secretary, Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, Aisha Humera Chaudhry in her concluding remarks underlined that the sectors that involved more government intervention through expanded regulatory role had low productivity like wheat and others whereas those agriculture areas that had more private sector role were providing positive results.
She acknowledged that climate change as an opportunity and all stakeholders needed to find opportunities in it like entrepreneurial side of climate change.
Chaudhry noted that incentives were crucial for agriculture sector to promote public-private partnerships aimed at scaling up agriculture sector resilience against climate change.
