Capturing the Potential for Greenhouse Gas Offsets in Indian Agriculture

This workshop focussed on the modelling work NCAER is undertaking on the economy-wide growth, employment and emission reduction gains from agricultural subsidy reform in collaboration with Professor Peter Dixon of Victoria University, Melbourne widely acknowledged as the world’s leading authority on CGE modelling. NCAER is one of the pioneers in CGE modelling in India and this work is utilising a state of the art, updated computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Indian economy at NCAER.

The eminent speakers included Prof Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University; Prof Peter Dixon, Victoria University; Prof Maureen Rimmer, Victoria University; Prof Ramesh Chand, Director, NCAP; Dr Kaushik Deb, BP India; and Mr S Sivakumar, Group Head, Agri Business, ITC Limited.

The workshop highlighted the NCAER project “Capturing the Potential for Greenhouse Gas Offsets in Indian Agriculture.” The project sheds light on hidden sources of growth and dynamism that India must tap. This project  builds on existing research in this area by pursuing the case for agricultural policy reform not just on the basis of growth and employment gains but also from the perspective of green-house gas reduction benefits that could come, say, from subsidy reforms. The workshop also included a session on ‘economy-wide policy reform priorities and complimentary agricultural modelling scenarios’ by Professor Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University. Kaushik Deb from BP presented on ‘Energy and Climate Modelling Imperatives in India’ while Jyoti Gujral from IDFC spoke on ‘MAC and GHG issues’. A subsequent workshop will focus on the gains from a carbon offset program in Indian agriculture.