Climate change vulnerability assessment with a focus on agriculture sector - a district level study of Assam and Odisha

Climate change is posing a serious challenge for developing countries like India. The agriculture sector is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. In turn, it is making food security and livelihoods of smallholders, more vulnerable to climate change. This study adopted the IPCC’s integrated indicator approach for assessing the vulnerability of the agriculture sector to climate change in Assam and Odisha by means of creating a vulnerability index and by comparing the spatial profile of vulnerability across the districts of the two states. Several socio-economic and biophysical indicators were identified and categorized into 3 components of vulnerability: sensitivity, exposure and, adaptive capacity. Running PCA on these indicators generated weights. Since, Principal Component 1 explains the maximum variance in the dataset, the correlation of indicators with Principal Component 1 has been used for computing the composite climate vulnerability indices. The districts are ranked on the basis of their performance on indices based on 3 components of vulnerability and composite vulnerability. District-wise spatial vulnerability profile has been created to identify and prioritize the most vulnerable districts. The results of the study indicate that the most vulnerable districts of Assam are – Tinsukia, Karbi Anglong, and Dima Hasao; and that of Odisha are - Nabarangpur, Kandhamal, Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh, Malkangiri, Nuapada, Kalahandi, and Koraput. The predominant indicators contributing to vulnerability have been identified which suggest that vulnerability in Assam is more due to high exposure while in Odisha, it is largely attributed to low adaptive capacity and high sensitivity. There exists a large difference in the extent of vulnerability among the districts and there is a need to develop specific policy interventions to address climate change at the district level in order to reduce the vulnerability of smallholders and to increase the resilience of the agriculture sector to climate change