Understanding the Role of Local and Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in a Changing World Climate: The case of the Indo-Gangetic Plains

Food security is diminished when food systems are stressed, and climate variation is one of several interacting factors (others include social and political factors) affecting food security. It is expected that global climate change will increase the problems of food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition for millions of people, particularly for the resource poor in developing countries, and more especially in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and small islands. Climate change will also further aggravate the current trends in land degradation, especially in the semi-arid tropical regions. Adaptation to climate change is, therefore, central to future food security at local, national and global levels. Climate change, besides change in climatic means, also involves increased variability and extremes, which are likely to increase significantly production variability (Vermeulen et al., 2010). Climate change will bring further difficulties to millions of people for whom achieving food security is already problematic, and is perhaps humanity’s most pressing challenge as it is estimated that population will raise to nine billion people by 2050 (Godfray et al., 2010). The expected impact of climate change on food security is so important that it is suggested that food security must be regarded as one of the main criteria for the effectiveness of adaptation to climate change at the national and local levels (FAO, 2008).Peer reviewe