Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
farming systems. Literature on impact assessment of watershed development (WSD)
interventions in India and the local knowledge and experience of the research team also
contributed to this first stage. The second stage involved applying the framework in a case
study (CS1) and using the insights generated to refine the context-specific list of system
functions, indicators, resilience capacities and attributes. To generate insights on agricultural
interventions and their contribution to climate resilience, we applied the CRISI framework to
assess two different farming systems located in Jalna district, Maharashtra – i) where
interventions aimed at improving agricultural productivity and irrigation infrastructure (CS2);
and ii) where interventions targeted the building of adaptative capacities in addition to
improving agricultural productivity (CS3). We also apply a pathways lens by considering the
cumulative effect of all agriculture related interventions over 15 years.
Results
The CRISI framework consists of the following six steps. These steps are: 1. System
description; 2. Challenges; 3. System functions; 4. Resilience capacities; 5. Resilience
attributes; and 6. Reflection (Table 1). We find that having a river with water availability nearly
all year round, and better irrigation infrastructure, are key to the resilience of CS2. On the other
hand, CS3 demonstrates other forms of resilience such as better social organisation within the
community and efficient management of the limited water resources. We also find a greater
degree of ownership and post-project sustainability in CS3. Discussions with stakeholders in
CS3 showed that some of this sustainability can be attributed to interventions that had a focus
on the health of its ecosystem, monitoring & evaluation of activities and the capacity building
interventions, particularly of the institutions that were set up, such as the Village Development
Committee and a Farmer Producer Organisation.
No.
CRISI
step
1 System
description
Overview of the 6 steps in the CRISI framework
Actions to be taken in the assessment
Understand and describe the context, spatial and time scale, stakeholders, etc
2 Challenges Explore stakeholders’ views of environmental (including climate), economic,
social and institutional stresses
3 System
functions
4 Resilience
capacities
Assess the performance of indicators related to the following 10 system
functions: 1) Social organisation, 2) Economic viability, 3) Food and nutrition
security, 4) Animal health and welfare, 5) Other bio-based resources, 6) Health
of ecosystem, 7) Biodiversity of habitat, 8) Attractiveness of area, 9) Quality of
life, 10) Equity (standard of living)
Assess the 4 capacities of Anticipation, Robustness, Adaptability, &
Transformability by considering the story behind the performance of the
indicators (step 3)
Institutional and policy innovations for accelerated and enhanced impacts
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