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Start Over Author "Giriraj Amarnath" Journal climate risk management
2 results on '"Giriraj Amarnath"'

1. Factors affecting willingness to adopt climate insurance among smallholder farmers in Sri Lanka

Author

Mohamed Aheeyar, Upali Amarasinghe, Giriraj Amarnath, and Niranga Alahacoon

Subjects
Drought, Disasters, Index-insurance, Vulnerability, Resilience, Risk transfer, Meteorology. Climatology, QC851-999
Abstract

Drought is an almost annual phenomenon affecting many parts of Sri Lanka, causing huge damage to agriculture and losses to the broader economy in general and farmers in particular. Climate change threatens to exacerbate these risks. Risk transfer mechanisms, such as crop insurance schemes, may help buffer farmers against these hazards and has gained attention as an adaptation response to become an important element in agricultural risk management. Despite the numerous efforts over several decades to popularize crop insurance as a risk transfer tool in the country under heavy subsidies, farmers' voluntary enrollment in crop insurance has been very low. Therefore, understanding the farmers' behaviors and attitudes towards crop insurance and the potential of such programs in emerging climate-induced vulnerabilities is critical to enhancing the welfare of the farming community. This paper assesses the factors that influence willingness to enroll for crop insurance among farmers in irrigated and rainfed farming system in the drought-prone North Central Province of Sri Lanka using a logistic regression model. The study sample consisted of 149 irrigated farmers and 51 rainfed farmers selected randomly. Regression results show that farmer’s age, agriculture as the primary source of income, irrigation as the source of water, and availability of supplementary water source are significantly related to willingness to pay (WTP) for insurance. The overall results indicate the role of household socioeconomic factors and their contextualized risk perceptions shape the adoption decision of crop insurance. The findings of the paper contribute to that end through primary data from a rainfed and irrigated areas in the province. Although the present research was carried out in a limited area, the study area is dominated by the traditional nature of agricultural practices by smallholder farmers in a drought exposed environment, the findings of the study should apply to the rest of the dry zone areas in the country. The results on factors affecting farmers' willingness to purchase crop insurance assist the practitioners and policymakers to draft the guidelines and strategies for more inclusive interventions for agriculture risk management and building farmer resilience.

Published
2023
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2. Using smart ICT to provide weather and water information to smallholders in Africa: The case of the Gash River Basin, Sudan

Author

Y. Gismalla, Vladimir Smakhtin, Y. Mohammed, Giriraj Amarnath, Gijs Simons, Bharat R. Sharma, Niranga Alahacoon, and M.C.M. Andriessen

Subjects
Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Geographic information system, 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences, business.industry, Information sharing, 0208 environmental biotechnology, Geography, Planning and Development, Environmental resource management, 02 engineering and technology, lcsh:QC851-999, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, 01 natural sciences, Spate irrigation, 020801 environmental engineering, Water resources, Information and Communications Technology, Agriculture, Information system, lcsh:Meteorology. Climatology, business, Cropping, 0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Abstract

In the Gash Delta of Eastern Sudan, spate irrigation (flood-recession farming) contributes substantially to rural livelihoods by providing better yields than rainfed dryland farming. However, spate irrigation farmers are challenged by the unpredictability of flooding. In recent decades, the number of farmers practicing spate irrigation has decreased, due to varying rainfall intensity and frequency, insufficient infrastructure and farmers’ limited capacity to manage such variations. One solution that may help farmers face such challenges is for them to access real-time water-related information by using smart Information and Communication a Technology (ICT). This paper shows how integrating remote sensing, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), flood-forecasting models and communication platforms can, in near real time, alert smallholder farmers and relevant government departments about incoming floods, using the Gash basin of Sudan as an example. The Ministry of Water Resources of Sudan used the findings of this study to transform farmers’ responses to flood arrival from being ‘reactive’, to planning for the flood event. Intensive on-site and institutional efforts to build the capacity of farmers, farmer organizations, development departments and officers of the Ministry helped to develop the initiative from simply sending ‘emergency alerts’ to enabling stakeholders to visually see the flood event unfolding in the region and to plan accordingly for storing water, operating spate-irrigation systems and undertaking cropping activities. The research, initially conducted on a 60 × 60 km site, was later extended to the entire Gash basin. The paper outlines how to develop tools that can monitor plot-specific information from satellite measurements, and supply detailed and specific information on crops, rather than providing very general statements on crop growth. Farmers are able to use such tools to optimize their farm profits by providing water to their crops in the right place, at the right time and in the right quantity. Finally, the work demonstrates the high potential of combining technology, namely remote sensing data and simple a agro-meteorological model with limited parameters, for large-scale monitoring of spate irrigation systems and information sharing to advise farmers as to how to apply this information to their managerial decisions. Keywords: Spate irrigation, Remote sensing, Geographic information system, ICT, Crop biomass, Sudan

Published
2018

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