Context: Recently, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to co-create data-driven digital public good, which includes DiCRA.

About DiCRA

• Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture (DiCRA) is a collaborative digital public good which provides open access to key geospatial datasets pertinent to climate resilient agriculture.

• This collaboration aims to enhance the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers by sharing open-source data for product development, technology transfer, and policy framing.

• The partnership’s focus is on improving climate resilience in agriculture, and it involves the dissemination of collaborative digital public goods such as DiCRA (Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture).

• DiCRA provides open access to key geospatial datasets relevant to climate-resilient agriculture and is curated by UNDP and partner organizations.

• It is curated by UNDP and partner organisations to inform public investments in agriculture and already provides intelligence on climate resilience for 50 million hectares of farmland across India.

• It is guided by the digital public good principles of open access, open software, open code, and open APIs.

• It uses cutting-edge data science and machine learning to identify farms that are resilient to climate change and those that are highly vulnerable.

Advantages

• By partnering to enhance and scale its use, NABARD will host and maintain the DiCRA platform and use its key geospatial datasets for policymaking, research, and development activities, with UNDP's technical support.

• This five-year technical cooperation is envisaged to foster collective climate action and create innovative platforms and new product offerings to enhance economic empowerment in rural India.

• Such open data innovations can highlight best practices, optimise agriculture investments and shelter populations from risk.