Combining agriculture, social and climate indicators to classify vulnerable regions in the Indian semi-arid region

Abstract

Climate change vulnerability is highly counter-productive for agriculture among the arid and semi-arid regions. The study constructs the agriculture vulnerability index for Karnataka, a south Indian state. The state has faced frequent climate-related shocks in the last decade. The district-wise vulnerability index is estimated using longitudinal data considering exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity as sub-indices. The results show that the districts in the north interior region of Karnataka are highly vulnerable to the climate change followed by the districts in the south interior and coastal regions. There is an urgent need to prioritize the most vulnerable districts while formulating the development policies to minimize the risk of climate change on agriculture. Specific technical knowledge and support need to be made available to the farmers for informative climate resilience action. HIGHLIGHTS We developed a framework to derive the vulnerability index considering the impacts of climate change.; Three indices were calculated to estimate the overall vulnerability index.; Exposure − sensitivity − adaptive capacity, which include agriculture, social and climate indicators, were used to build the vulnerability index for the state.;

Keywords

• agriculture
• climate change
• semi-arid region
• vulnerability index