Assessing the Climate Resilience of Semi-Arid Farming Systems in India: Framework and Application

Semi-arid regions in India are characterized by poor natural resources, smallholder farmers and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The vulnerability of semi-arid farming systems to climate change and the state of agrarian distress in India underscore the need to assess their climate resilience. We observe weaknesses in existing frameworks for assessing resilience, such as a bias toward assessing a system’s status quo and the lack of clarity between assessing resilience to specific stresses and a system’s more general resilience attributes. The need for context-specific tools and frameworks has also been highlighted in literature on climate resilience. To address these gaps, we develop a context-specific framework to assess the climate resilience of semi-arid farming systems in India and evaluate its relevance. The Climate Resilience In Semi-arid India (CRISI) framework, with customized system functions, indicators, resilience capacities and attributes, has been developed by combining insights from existing literature, from the local knowledge and expertise of the research team and from a case study application. Considering emerging climate change risks, the case study further shows us there is an urgent need to build the resilience capacities of adaptability and transformability of the farming system. CRISI’s inclusiveness in identifying stakeholder needs, its systemic understanding of resilience and its provision of information for decision-making make it useful for the farming community, practitioners and policymakers in assessing and building climate resilience.