The impact of climate change on India’s food security has three dimensions — availability, access, and absorption.
Climate change has added to the enormity of India’s food security challenges. While the relationship between climate change and food security is complex, most studies focus on one dimension of food security, i.e., food availability. This paper provides an overview of the impact of climate change on India’s food security, keeping in mind three dimensions — availability, access, and absorption. It finds that ensuring food security in the face of climate change will be a formidable challenge and recommends, among others, the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, greater emphasis on urban food security and public health, provision of livelihood security, and long-term relief measures in the event of natural disasters.
Introduction
At the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are targets to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition. For India, food security continues to be high on its list of development priorities because the country’s relatively high rates of economic growth have not led to a reduction in hunger and undernutrition. India’s gross domestic product at factor cost and per capita income grew at seven percent and five percent per annum, respectively, from 1990-91 to 2013-14. [i] However, the incidence of undernutrition has dropped only marginally from 210.1 million in 1990 to 194.6 million in 2014, [ii] and India has failed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. About 12 Indian states fall under the ‘alarming’ category of the Global Hunger Index. According to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, the proportion of children under five years who are underweight is significantly high in states such as Bihar (43.9 percent), Madhya Pradesh (42.8 percent) and Andhra Pradesh (31.9 percent). [iii]
While large sections of the Indian population suffer from acute undernutrition, rising incomes and growing urbanisation are rapidly changing the composition of the food basket — away from cereals to high-value agricultural commodities such as fish and meat. [iv], [v] As a result, the total demand for foodgrains is projected to be higher in the future due to an increase in population as well as a growing indirect demand from the feed. Mittal (2008) has made long-term projections of India’s food demand and supply up to 2026. According to her, the increase in total food demand is mainly due to growth in population and per capita income while production is likely to be severely constrained by low yield growth. [vi] Moreover, it will be difficult to meet India’s long-term food requirements with domestic production alone. [vii]Kumar et al (2009) also find that with current production trends, meeting future demand for foodgrains through domestic production will be difficult. [viii]
One of the biggest issues confronting Indian agriculture is low productivity. India’s cereal yields are drastically lower than those of developed regions such as North America (6671 kg per ha), East Asia and the Pacific (5,184 kg per ha), and the Euro area (5855.4 kg per ha) (see Table 1). Table 2 shows that yield per hectare of foodgrains has stagnated in India since the 1980s.
Table 1: Cereal yields (kg per ha, 2013)
| Country/ Region | Kg per hectare |
| East Asia & Pacific (developing only) | 5,184.0 |
| Central Europe and the Baltics | 4,131.1 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 1,433.5 |
| Europe & Central Asia (all income levels) | 3,661.6 |
| Euro area | 5,855.4 |
| North America | 6,671.0 |
| India | 2,961.6 |
| World | 3,851.3 |
Source: World Bank Database
Table 2: Growth rate of yield per hectare (%) of foodgrains
| Rice | Wheat | Coarse Cereals | Pulses | Total Foodgrains | |
| 1980-81 to 1990-91 | 2.7 | 3.4 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 3.0 |
| 1990-91 to 2000-01 | 0.9 | 1.7 | 1.3 | -0.6 | 1.7 |
| 2000-01 to 2010-11 | 1.6 | 1.0 | 4.1 | 2.4 | 1.7 |
| 2010-11 to 2014-15 | 1.6 | -1.0 | 3.1 | 1.9 | 1.8 |
Source: Reserve Bank of India database
How does climate change affect food security?
The World Food Summit in 1996 defined food security thus: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”[ix] According to this definition, there are three main dimensions to food security: food availability, access to food, and food absorption. Thus, adequate food production alone is not a sufficient condition for a country’s food security.
Food security is one of the leading concerns associated with climate change. [x] Climate change affects food security in complex ways. It impacts crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, and can cause grave social and economic consequences in the form of reduced incomes, eroded livelihoods, trade disruption and adverse health impacts. However, it is important to note that the net impact of climate change depends not only on the extent of the climatic shock but also on the underlying vulnerabilities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (2016), both biophysical and social vulnerabilities determine the net impact of climate change on food security. [xi]
Much of the literature on the impact of climate change on food security, however, has focused on just one dimension of food security, i.e., food production. The impact of climate change on the other dimensions of food security — access and utilisation — have received little scholarly attention. This paper explores the impact of climate change on India’s food security by considering all these dimensions of food security.
Food production
Climate change presents an additional stress on India’s long-term food security challenges as it affects food production in many ways. For one, it may cause significant increases in inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability of monsoon rainfall. According to World Bank estimates, based on the International Energy Agency’s current policy scenario and other energy sector economic models, for a global mean warming of 4°C, there will be a 10-percent increase in annual mean monsoon intensity and a 15-percent increase in year-to-year variability in monsoon precipitation. [xii] The World Bank (2013) also predicts that droughts will pose an increasing risk in the north-western part of India while southern India will experience an increase in wetness. [xiii]
The impact of climate change on water availability will be particularly severe for India because large parts of the country already suffer from water scarcity, to begin with, and largely depend on groundwater for irrigation. According to Cruz et al. (2007), the decline in precipitation and droughts in India has led to the drying up of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems. [xiv] About 54 percent of India faces high to extremely high water stress.[xv] Large parts of north-western India, notably the states of Punjab and Haryana, which account for the bulk of the country’s rice and wheat output, are extremely water-stressed.[xvi] Figure 1 shows that groundwater levels are declining across India. About 54 percent of India’s groundwater wells are decreasing, with 16 percent of them decreasing by more than one meter per year. [xvii] North-western India again stands out as highly vulnerable; of the 550 wells studied in the region, 58 percent had declining groundwater levels. With increased periods of low precipitation and dry spells due to climate change, India’s groundwater resources will become even more important for irrigation, leading to greater pressure on water resources. According to the World Bank projections, with a global mean warming of 2°C above pre-industrial levels, food water requirements in India will exceed green water availability. [xviii] The mismatch between demand and supply of water is likely to have far-reaching implications on foodgrain production and India’s food security.
The impact of climate change on water availability will be particularly severe for India because large parts of the country already suffer from water scarcity, to begin with, and largely depend on groundwater for irrigation.
The impact of climate change on water availability will be particularly severe for India because large parts of the country already suffer from water scarcity, to begin with, and largely depend on groundwater for irrigation.
Figure 1: Groundwater level in India (meters below the ground level)
Indian agriculture, and thereby India’s food production, is highly vulnerable to climate change largely because the sector continues to be highly sensitive to monsoon variability. After all, about 65 percent of India’s cropped area is rain-fed. Figure 2 shows that most districts with very high and high vulnerability to climate change are in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. Wheat and rice, two crops central to nutrition in India, have been found to be particularly sensitive to climate change. Lobell et al (2012) found that wheat growth in northern India is highly sensitive to temperatures greater than 34°C. [xix] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007 echoed similar concerns on wheat yield: a 0.5°C rise in winter temperature is likely to reduce wheat yield by 0.45 tonnes per hectare in India. [xx] Acute water shortage conditions, together with thermal stress, will affect rice productivity even more severely. [xxi]
Figure 2: Vulnerability of Indian agriculture to Climate Change (2021-2050)
Food access
While there has been considerable progress in understanding the sensitivities of crop production to yield, there are relatively few models which assess the impact of climate change on access to food. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, depending on the climate change scenario, 200 to 600 million more people globally could suffer from hunger by 2080 (Yohe et al., 2007). [xxiii] Lloyd et al (2011) also make the projection that climate change will have significant effects on future undernutrition, even when the beneficial effects of economic growth are taken into account. [xxiv] According to their model predictions, there will be a 62-percent increase in severe stunting in South Asia and a 55-percent increase in east and south sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. [xxv]
It is more difficult to find similar, modelling-based studies on the impact of climate change on food access and nutrition specifically focusing on India. However, noted experts like Nira Ramachandran have underscored the importance of factoring climate change in the discourse on nutrition in the country. Ramachandran warns that climate change can slow down, and even drastically reduce, the improvements in food security and nutrition that India has managed to achieve so far. [xxvi]
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