Dr Dar, who also heads the Chair of the Committee for Science and Technology of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, said there were ways to make the poor less vulnerable using science-based interventions.

“Business as usual will not help us meet the Millennium Develop Goals and reduce poverty by half by 2015,” he said in a press release here.

Stating that many countries had already showing signs of impending scarcity for water, he said availability of water for agricultural sector was getting limited following pressures from other sectors.

“The nexus of climate change and desertification, combined with land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortage and fossil fuel shortage will make it even more riskier for the farmers to farm in the drylands of the world,” he observed.

Listing out various research initiatives of ICRISAT that sought to address the problems of dryland farmers, Dr Dar said crop improvement research and watershed development programmes helped farmers increase incomes significantly.