ISPRS Archives XXXVIII-8/W3 Workshop Proceedings: Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture 359 ASSESSING THE ROLE OF INDIAN LIVESTOCK IN CLIMATE CHANGE

Livestock has been the mainstay of Indian agriculture sector and also a major source of GHGs emissions from the world’s largest livestock population. The milching livestock (including lactating dairy cattle, buffalo and goat) constitutes 21.3% of the country’s livestock. We present a detailed inventory of GHGs emissions from milching livestock (using the recent census and country-specific emission coefficients based on IPCC guidelines) vis-a-vis milk production in the country. The total CH4 emission from enteric fermentation and manure management was estimated at 3.16 Tg/yr for the year 2003. Enteric fermentation contributes 91.3% of total CH4 emissions as compared to only 8.7% by manure management. The detailed spatial analysis in GIS identified the districts with high CH4 emissions. The N2O emission from milching dairy cattle was estimated at 0.021 GgN2O/yr, with a share of 77.5% by indigenous cattle. The total GHG emission is estimated at 66.4 Mt in terms of total CO2 equivalent. The CH4 emission in terms of milk production is less in exotic cows (23.8 gmCH4/kg milk) as compared to indigenous cows (44.6 gmCH4/kg milk). The projected estimates of livestock population indicates that lactating dairy cattle and buffalo are expected to increase by 3.5 and 5.6 million resulting to an expected increase of ~36% and 17% methane emissions, respectively by the year 2021. These estimates are important indicators for studying the future impacts of livestock to climate change and their role in food security, and may also serve as an important pathway for formulating policy measures for sustainable livestock production. ∗ [email protected]