An Overview of Climate Change And Its Impact on Agriculture: a Review From Least Developing Country, Nepal

Abstract

Climate is an important factor for agricultural production. However, in recent years consistent warming and rise in global temperature has resulted in visible impacts on the agriculture across the world. Nepal is not an exceptional case, where rising temperature has already affected the country's agricultural production thereby affecting the food security and agrarian communities. It is expected that the level of vulnerability will be higher in high altitude as compared to the lower altitude. In addition, majority of the population are subsistence farmer in rural parts of Nepal and has low land hold- ing capacity. Nepal is one of the least developed countries in the world with low per capita income, and thus the country's ability to adapt to the extreme climatic events has direct implications in its strategies on agriculture sector development. However, Nepal still lack strong scientific data about the cases of climate change and due to varied geographical setting, sufficient meteorological data cannot be easily obtained from remote parts of the country. This review tries to explore the current status of vulnerability to the climate change in Nepal. In Nepal, more than 80% of the people heavily rely on agri- culture for their subsistence and thus, climate change will bring expectedly negative response to the agricultural sector in the country.