The second Stake holder’s Work shop for Norwegian Embassy supported project under Institutional Cooperation programme- 'ClimaRice' was conducted on 24th November, 2009 at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore, India.
Dr.V.Geethalakshmi, Professor and Head, ACRC explained the project activities to the stakeholders. Dr. P. Murugesa Boopathy, Vice Chancellor, TNAU presided the inaugural function of the workshop and delivered the Presidential address.
Mrs. Inger Sangnes, Counseller, Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi released the second News letter of the ClimaRice project and delivered the key note address. Mrs. Inger Sangnes highlighted the role of Norwegian embassy in Climate change studies and informed the stakeholders about ClimaRice Phase II that has been recently sanctioned by the embassy to disseminate the adaptation strategies.
Dr. Nagothu Udaya Sekhar from Bioforsk briefed the importance of Stake Holders Integration & Science Policy Linkage in ClimaRice. Mr. M. Moorthy, Chief Engineer, Water Resource Organization, Trichy delivered the inaugural address and explained the importance of ClimaRice in Cauvery River Basin.
Mr. S. Ranganathan, President, Cauvery delta Development Studies complimented the ClimaRice Project team and the Norwegian Embassy for carrying out such research in the Cauvery Delta which is the rice bowl of south India. The scientists from collaborating institutes from Bioforsk, Norway and IPRC, Hawaii participated along with Mr.L.Vijayanathan, Senior Advisor from The Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi.
In this Stakeholders workshop, officials from Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Engineering, Water Resource Organization, Voluntary Organizations and Farmers Association besides water managers, farmers and Policy makers participated for developing future strategies to resolve the crisis due to climate change in Agriculture.
Dr. Nagothu Udaya Sekhar chaired the technical session in which Climarice Scientists, Dr.H.Annamalai from IPRC, Dr.A.Lakshmanan from TNAU and Dr.Nils Otto from Bioforsk presented the project findings to the stake holders. The stakeholders expressed their perceptions, problems associated with the rice production in the present context, especially water availability in the basin, impacts due to markets and new policy changes.
The key issues pertaining to rice production under changing climate were discussed and various adaptation and mitigation measures including water and nutrient management, microbial technologies to minimise methane emission from rice fields were also explained to stake holders. This workshop also helped to identify possible institutional and policy measures necessary for improving adaptive capacity of farmers under changing climate.