The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), in collaboration with The Gates Foundation and Dalberg Advisors has launched of the National Climate Stack Innovation Challenge. It is a national initiative aimed at strengthening climate resilience in rural India. It seeks to address a key structural gap in India’s climate resilience ecosystem- the absence of an integrated and interoperable climate data architecture capable of producing reliable near-term hazard projections for rural areas.
Background
India’s agriculture and rural economy are increasingly vulnerable to frequent, intense, and unpredictable climate risks, including:
- Extreme weather events
- Floods and droughts
- Heatwaves and changing rainfall patterns
However, current climate response mechanisms face major challenges:
- Disaster response systems remain largely reactive.
- Climate data is fragmented across institutions.
- Information is often locked in proprietary models.
- Lack of ground-truth validation and local-level data.
As a result, farmers, financial institutions, and policymakers often make decisions with limited climate foresight.
About National Climate Stack Innovation Challenge
- Objective: To design a National Climate Stack for rural India. This Climate Stack will serve as a comprehensive digital framework integrating multiple climate data streams, enabling:
- Credible 10–15 year hazard projections
- Localised climate risk assessment
- Decision-ready climate intelligence.
- Key Features of Proposed Climate Stack: It will include
- Interoperable APIs for integrating diverse climate datasets.
- Layered modelling systems for hazard prediction.
- User-friendly dashboards for policymakers, financial institutions, and farmers.
- The platform will provide granular climate foresight to support agriculture planning, rural finance, and public policy decisions.
- Role of DiCRA Platform The Climate Stack will be anchored in the Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture (DiCRA) platform developed by NABARD.
- DiCRA aims to create climate-resilient agricultural planning systems using advanced climate modelling and geospatial analytics.
- Through the Climate Stack, DiCRA is expected to evolve into a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for climate intelligence.
- Participation and Implementation: The Innovation Challenge invites participation from researchers, startups, academic institutions, Private-sector innovators
- Participants will propose scalable implementation frameworks for the Climate Stack.
- Prize Money: Top three entries will receive financial awards funded by NABARD
- First Prize: ₹15 lakh
- Second Prize: ₹10 lakh
- Third Prize: ₹5 lakh