Pilot evaluation of the Index Based Flood Insurance in Bihar, India: Lessons of experiences

The Government of Bihar (GOB) with the help of Government of India (GOI) introduced and implemented various crop insurance programs, to provide protection against losses caused by fluctuations in the output of a crop from one year to another or from one crop season to another. Traditional agricultural insurances are designed to make compensation to client farmers affected by various disasters and natural calamities based on individual yield losses or damage to crops and livestock (Ahmed, 2013; Swain and Patnaik, 2016). For developing countries like India, with large numbers of smallholder farmers, measuring such individual losses would incur enormous costs for insurance companies. The index-based insurance offers an alternative in which individual assessment is not necessary. Advances in satellite technology and data analysis were integrated to develop index insurance products, which were piloted in different countries throughout the world such as India, Ethiopia, Senegal, and United States. The index insurance products help minimize the high transaction costs and have the potential to expand the reach of insurance policies to rural areas that were previously considered uninsurable (Swain and Patnaik, 2016; Smith and Watts, 2019). The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has developed an Index-Based Flood Insurance (IBFI) product integrating hi-tech modeling and satellite imagery (Amarnath and Sikka, 2018; Matheswaran et al. 2019). The product was pilot tested among 200 farmers in six villages of the Gaighat Block of Muzaffarpur District, Bihar during the Khariff season, 2017. This report presents the findings of the IBFI ex-post evaluation undertaken in the pilot areas in Muzaffarpur. The findings of this study provide lessons on how index-based insurance schemes can be made more inclusive, and inform any development of a scheme for future upscaling by IWMI. The findings are based on the qualitative assessment made in April 2018 and a household survey conducted in July 2018

Making index-based flood insurance socially inclusive in Bangladesh: challenges and options

Floods and other weather-related disasters plague farmers in Bangladesh, and climate change threatens to exacerbate these risks. At stake are the livelihoods of millions of small and marginal farmer households that are at risk of becoming further entrenched in poverty. Lack of compensation or other buffering mechanisms means crop losses give rise to deepening cycles of debt, especially when cultivation is financed through loans. While neighboring India has developed strong policy and strategic direction for using risk transfer mechanisms, such as Weather Index Insurance (WII), as a disaster risk reduction tool, policy support in Bangladesh is lukewarm. To date, most WII schemes have been pilots implemented mainly by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and donors. The Index-based Flood Insurance (IBFI) project of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) hopes to adapt the pilot scheme it is trialling in Bihar, India, to Bangladesh. To understand how such a scheme can be made accessible, especially to marginal groups, fieldwork was undertaken in Sirajganj district. Here, a WII pilot project, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which offers insurance for crops during both the Aman and Boro seasons is ongoing. This brief is informed by findings from this fieldwork

Institutional options available to ensure that index-based flood insurance (IBFI) is socially inclusive in Bihar, India

Flood disaster is one of the greatest challenges affecting the livelihoods of the people of Bihar, India, hampering interventions aimed at addressing poverty, nutrition and health issues. Small and marginal farmers, tenant farmers and female-headed households are the most vulnerable to floods. Past insurance schemes implemented in Bihar, including both conventional and index-based flood insurance (IBFI) schemes, have been largely biased towards larger farmers. As a result, such schemes failed to reach the small and marginal farmers, and other vulnerable groups, despite them being the most in need of risk transfer mechanisms (Singh and Singh 2013). An institutional mapping was followed by interviews conducted with key stakeholders engaged in crop insurance schemes. Based on these interviews, this brief attempts to highlight the existing institutional mechanisms that can support tenant farmers and other vulnerable groups to gain access to IBFI. It also explains how the line agencies of the Government of India (GoI) and the State Government of Bihar (GoB) could use the identified institutional mechanisms to support the future upscaling of IBFI schemes

Ex-Post evaluation of the second pilot of the Index-Based Flood Insurance in Bihar, India: Reflections for upscale

The major objectives of the evaluation were to understand the performance of the IBFI product in reaching diverse groups of farmers and the hindrances to making the insurance more inclusive, in order to recommend solutions and strategies to address equity issues

Virtual regional dialogue on options to promote more inclusive weather index insurance

Over the past decade, countries in South Asia have experienced more frequent and intense extreme weather events – floods and droughts – driven by climate change. In 2021 alone, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal experienced intense monsoon rainfall and floods spurred by an erratic monsoon, even as parts of India and Pakistan experienced intense heatwaves and drought The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report released in August 2021, suggests that such events are only likely to increase, noting that at 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius global warming levels, mean precipitation and monsoon extremes are projected to intensify in summer over India and South Asia

Climate change and agricultural adaptation in Sri Lanka: a review

Climate change is inevitable and will continue into the next century. Since the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, a thorough understanding of climate transition is critical for formulating effective adaptation strategies. This paper provides an overview of the status of climate change and adaptation in the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka. The review clearly indicates that climate change is taking place in Sri Lanka in terms of rainfall variability and an increase in climate extremes and warming. A number of planned and reactive adaptation responses stemming from policy and farm-level decisions are reported. These adaptation efforts were fragmented and lacked a coherent connection to the national development policies and strategies. Research efforts are needed to develop and identify adaptation approaches and practices that are feasible for smallholder farmers, particularly in the dry zone where paddy and other food crops are predominately cultivated. To achieve the envisaged growth in the agricultural sector, rigorous efforts are necessary to mainstream climate change adaptation into national development policies and ensure that they are implemented at national, regional and local levels

An evaluation of groundwater institutions in India: A property rights perspective

Ananda, J ORCiD: 0000-0002-4072-6725Groundwater governance has become an intractable policy issue, which has many implications for the living standards and well-being of millions of rural poor in South Asia. Groundwater governance is complex as it is influenced by various hydrogeological, sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors. Unregulated groundwater extraction rates in South Asia have depleted the aquifers causing a raft of socioeconomic, environmental and human health problems. This paper analyzes de facto rights in groundwater markets and other emerging ‘groundwater-sharing institutional arrangements’ in India. Using a multi-dimensional property rights model, the paper decomposes de facto groundwater rights while drawing insights and broad policy lessons. The findings indicate that there is much scope for enhancing the ‘small group groundwater sharing’ governed by social regulatory measures. Moreover, distortionary subsidies for agriculture in general and groundwater development, in particular, have had an adverse impact of the resource use and merit further attention. © 2019, Springer Nature B.V

Adoption and factors affecting on adoption of integrated pest management among vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka

The overuse and misuse of chemical pesticides has widely been reported in vegetable cultivation in Sri Lanka. While safer and environmental friendly pest and disease management methods such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are popular around the world, only little effort has been taken to promote IPM in Sri Lankan vegetable cultivation. Furthermore, farmers have not shown much interest on practicing IPM in vegetable cultivation. However, the level of IPM adoption by vegetable farmers and the factors influencing the adoption and strategies to promote IPM in vegetable cultivation have not been identified. Accordingly, this study was conducted to identify the level of IPM adoption and factors influencing the adoption of IPM in vegetable cultivation and to understand the strategies for promoting vegetable IPM in future. Primary data was collected by interviewing 290 farmer households. ‘Level of adoption’ and ‘farmers’ knowledge’ on nine practices used in IPM technique were tested and nine socio-economic variables were analyzed to identify the factors influencing the IPM adoption. Findings indicated that the main income source of the majority (68%) of respondents was from vegetable farming from which at least half of their household income was secured. A total of 47% farmers apply chemical pesticides before pests or diseases appear in the field as a routine activity, and without considering the ‘economic threshold level’. Although the majority (60%) of farmers have used the recommended dosage in spraying, mixing several pesticides when applying was common. According to the findings, although the term IPM was familiar to 44% of respondents, only 20% s had a certain level of understanding on the IPM technique. The adoption of IPM practices among farmers was not at a satisfactory level. Practices known and followed for a long time were better adopted compared to the practices which are relatively novel. Results also showed that despite the adoption of these practices, understanding of farmers regarding the benefits and the appropriate use of such practices was not at a satisfactory level. “Farmers’ knowledge on IPM” had a positive impact while the “proportionate income from vegetable cultivation” was negative on the level of IPM adoption. In addition, the results showed that gaps in policy and institutional setup, negative attitudes of farmers and officers on IPM were conduce for the lower adoption level of IPM in the vegetable cultivation