Applying a systems framework to examine policies that address sustainability challenges arising from agricultural practices in north India

Sustainable development requires formulating policies that help work towards a long-term vision of a better future and addressing challenges that are often systemic by nature, i.e., functions of the inter-connected system structure. Agricultural practices in Punjab, where rice and wheat are most commonly grown, have led to multiple adverse social and environmental impacts such as health issues due to air pollution, over-exploitation of groundwater, over-use of fertilizers and reducing local crop diversity. Most studies on the region have analyzed different sustainability challenges in isolation and thus are unable to shed light on the nature of transition needed at a system level to achieve collective sustainability goals. In this paper, we apply a systems framework to examine policies that address sustainability challenges associated with rice-wheat cultivation in the north-Indian state of Punjab.

We use the human-technical-environmental (HTE) framework (Selin & Selin, 2020) to first itemize the system components, then specify the interactions between components through different pathways in the system and finally examine the changes that occur when interactions between components are changed through an intervention. Using this framework, we create a system model that connects and quantifies the relationships between system components and examine the impacts of interventions on selected sustainability indicators - air pollution and impact on mortality (using GEOS-Chem adjoint, an inverse model of atmospheric chemistry and transport), greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater consumption, soil nutrient loss, protein availability in low income households, farmers' income and government expenditure.

We argue that current policies ignore the existing institutional and knowledge landscape that drives regional agricultural practices which lead to wide-ranging adverse impacts. We show that multiple pathways can lead to similar transitions - while fundamental changes in cropping and food consumption patterns can potentially lead to a desired sustainability state, policies targeting gradual changes (for e.g. progressive adoption of existing residue management options) can lead to comparable benefits, if systemic challenges with awareness and institutional bottlenecks are addressed.