Sci.Int.(Lahore),27(2),1519-1522,2015 ISSN 1013-5316; CODEN: SINTE 8 1519 March-April CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION THROUGH CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE IN PAKISTAN: CRITICAL ANALYSIS *Saleem Ashraf 1 , Muhammad Iftikhar 2 , Ghazanfar Ali Khan 2 , M. Athar Javed Khan 3 & Hammad Raza 2 1 In-Service Agricultural Training Institute, Sargodha, Pakistan 2 Institute of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan 3 Department of Continuing Education, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan Corresponding Author: Email: saleem1828@gmail.com ABSTRACT: earth and already causing inclusive impacts from melting glaciers, and rising sea levels increasing the probabilities of natural risks like flooding due to extreme rainfall. If these trends persists and hasten in struggling country like Pakistan, might cause significant risks to essential natural resources for survival as major chunk of population is agriculture dependent but poor, food insecure and victimized to hunger. Farmers are exploiting natural resources to feed their families resultantly; they are increasing the concentration of CO 2 and greenhouse gasses. It’s time for Pakistan to take some actions to combat climate change. Pakistan can significantly limit the damage and loss caused by climate change through implementing environment friendly techniques among farming communities such as Conservation agriculture to promote climate smart agriculture. Key Words: Conservation Agriculture, climate change, resource conservation 1. INTRODUCTION The existence and occurring of climate change in the world has been acknowledged; future change is also inevitable that’s why we will have to adapt to these changes [1,2]. Furthermore, future impacts and adaptation necessities will be reliant on the necessity and effectiveness with which mitigation measures are executed [3]. For instance, Australia has significant vulnerability to the changes in temperature and rainfall projected over the next decades to 100 years [4]. Pakistan is also vulnerable to the climate change as Pakistan stands on 3rd among the top 10 worst vulnerable countries. Pakistan is blend of poor to rich population but poor population is more which is heavily dependent on farming. These poor people are more vulnerable to external shocks including droughts, natural disasters floods, earthquake affecting their livelihood assets. To reduce this vulnerability mitigations strategy can do better. IPCC [1] described climate change adaptation as “adjustments in human and natural systems in response to actual or expected climatic variation, with a view to moderating harm or exploiting beneficial opportunities is an area of growing concern and engagement for many developing countries”. Conservation agriculture is one of the most viable mitigation strategies to reduce the climate change impacts. Conservation Agriculture is to conserve, improve and make more efficient use of natural resources through integrated management of soil, water, crops and other biological resources. Pakistan is low income country where almost half of the population is living below the poverty line. Literacy rate is below the mark and these people are already victims of deprived resources. Farmers don’t seem to be aware of climate change neither the efforts from public sector are seen in this perspective [5]. So, climate change is a major challenge how we will cope with its drastic impacts for longer term. In addition what will be the future of farmers who are going to be victimized? It is also fact that these farmers still didn’t enjoy the resilience after being struck by disastrous flood. Climate Change and Agriculture Climate change known no boundaries and it is also uncertain. The impacts of climate change are widespread around the globe either its developed country of developing. Agriculture is the sector having enough contribution in economic development of any country. In monetary terms, agriculture represents less than 2 percent of GDP in high -income countries, and 2.9 percent for the world as a whole. It is more important for low-income countries, amounting to almost one-fourth of GDP in the least developed countries In addition; agriculture is also the most climate sensitive industries with outdoor production processes that heavily depend on particular levels of temperature and precipitation [6]. Temperature, rainfall and precipitations are the indicators of climate change and a variation of these indicators is harmful for the agricultural productivity. Rising greenhouse gas emissions raise changes in rainfall patterns, river flows and temperature, resultantly the food availability may decline because of lower production [7]. Calzadilla et al. [8] narrated that under both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of future emissions, the many effects of climate change could together cause food production to fall 0.5 per cent by the end of this decade, and 2.3 per cent by the 2050s. as a result food prices will increase while availability will decrease. By midcentury, staple food like cereals grains, sugarcane and wheat re predicted to be roughly 40% more expensive than the countries being safe from climate change [7]. Above mentioned facts show that almost entire world is vulnerable to the climate change but no one know which country and when. Moreover, no one knows the vulnerability context. But most of the countries in the world are preparing to mitigate the climate change through diversified production practice sand new technologies. It’s also pretty clear that all the countries are not doing equally but doing under their resources imitations. Like the other countries of world Pakistan is also under threat of climate change. Center of International and Security Studies at Maryland USA, stated Pakistan as one of the high risk fragmented economies at risk: “Piecing together publicly available data about Pakistan, it is clear that climatic changes disturb the social and political equilibrium of a society by either creating new fault lines in the social, political, or ethnic landscape of that society, or by exacerbating existing ones”. -