Earth observations to verify farmer- and field-level changes in Punjab, India: Aligning Nationally Determined Contributions to meet Paris Climate Agreement commitments with Sustainable Development Goals
Abstract
Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are an essential component of achieving long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. NDCs include policies, "shovel ready" planned projects, and ongoing real-world interventions by each country to reduce national greenhouse emissions and build their resilience to climate change. NDCs and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are universal goals under the 2030 Agenda, are often mis-aligned. But not always. As this current work in Punjab State, India, funded via the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP; http://www.ccacoalition.org/en/activity/open-agricultural-burning) illustrates, NDC-driven Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) intervention projects funded by multinational organizations can meet greenhouse gas reductions while still aligning with SDGs, like Climate Action, Zero Hunger, and Sustainable Cities and Communites. This projects includes village-specific intervention strategies to introduce CSA approaches to end spring wheat harvest burning (April-May) and fall rice harvest burning (October-November) in Punjab State, India. Impacts of this open agricultural burning negatively impact air quality and public health in Punjab, as well as deteriorate soil carbon levels, but also can lead to extreme air pollution in nearby cities like New Delhi, as seen in Fall 2017. We use several NASA, ESA, and commercial satellite assets to assess changing cropping systems, including crop type and tillage practices, as well as the agricultural open burning itself. These Earth observations, which are scalable across agroecosystems, are combined with a newly developed regional network led by the Punjab Agricultural Management and Extension Training Institute (PAMETI) to verify this NDC-driven climate action project. In Spring 2018, we saw a 50-90% reduction in open agricultural burning in the six villages targeted in Amritsar and Sangrur districts of Punjab. With another four growing seasons to monitor, test, and verify, we have early results to present as well as future planned methodologies to determine if this CSA project supports the global policy frameworks of NDCs and SDGs targets and indicators.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMPA23A..08M
- Keywords:
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- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4321 Climate impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 4329 Sustainable development;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES