A National Stakeholder Consultation on Climate Change Platform was organized at Central Research  Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA),  Hyderabad during September 19-20, 2011. This consultation was held primarily to identify the priority research areas under the climate change theme which is one of the 20 high priority areas identified by the Council for the XII Five Year Plan.  All the stakeholders including researchers, NGOs and private sector were invited for this consultation.

The consultation was inaugurated by Dr.A.K.Singh, Deputy Director General (Natural Resource Management), ICAR, Dr.Y.P.Abrol, Chairman of NICRA Expert Committee was also present.  Dr. B. Venkateswarlu, Director, CRIDA, presented an overview of the climate change research in agriculture sector in India, objectives of the proposed climate change platform and a broad road-map for XII Plan. 

 The consultation received over-whelming response with the attendance of 280 participants out of which 130 are from ICAR Institutes, 80 from SAUs, 15 from Central Institutes like IITs and other general universities and 55 from NGOs and private sector.

The consultation was organized in four broad themes namely (i) strategic research, (ii) technology demonstration & dissemination (iii) knowledge management, community mobilization & policy research and (iv) capacity building. The current status of research and the tentative road-map for XII Plan of each of the theme was briefly introduced and inputs from the participants were invited.  All the participants substantially contributed to the discussion with total of 484 inputs received from diverse stakeholders.  CRIDA is in the process of synthesizing these inputs and preparing the concept note for climate change platform for XII Plan.