Abstract
This paper assesses the district level climate vulnerability in the state of Rajasthan using largescale data on climate and socio-economic variables.More than thirty indicators segregated into four components of exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity and crop production loss were combined to develop a composite index of vulnerability and homogenous districts were clustered into three categories, viz.low, medium and high.Wide inter-district variations were observed across the calculated indices. The result reveals that highest production losses occurred in Ganganagar district followed by Hanumangarh and Bharatpur. Pali was least exposed to the climatic variability, whereas Bundi had the maximum exposure.Jaisalmer rated the maximum sensitivity level. Further, Pratapgarh followed by Jaisalmer and Banswara had the lowest degree of adaptive capacity. On the whole, districts like Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Ganganagar, Bundi, Bharatpur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Chittorgarh, Alwar, Baran and Pratapgarh exhibit high level of vulnerability to climatic change. While on the other spectrum Sirohi district was least vulnerable due to lower exposure, sensitivity, crop production loss and high adaptive capacity. The analysis, suggests the need for prioritizing vulnerable areas to arrest regional imbalances by encouraging need/location based interventions for moderating the degree of vulnerability, whilst making agro-ecosystem in Rajasthan resilient to climatic aberrations.
Highlights
Climate change poses significant risks across diverse ecosystems
Understanding the degree of vulnerability to climate change is a prelude for identification and prioritization of vulnerable areas, factors that serve as barriers to effective adaptation and for constructing suitable region–specific interventions to better cope up with current and future climate changes
Climate change poses a serious threat to the food and livelihood security in the dry land regions and Rajasthan possessing large tract of land under arid environment, lower forest coverage and expanding desertification is at a greater risks
Summary
Climate change poses significant risks across diverse ecosystems. In its sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018) states that dryland regions and population dependent on agriculture-based livelihoods are disproportionately at a higher risk to the climate variability.The increasing frequency of inter-season variations in rainfall and temperature and other extreme events have significant impact on agriculture production and livelihoods in India, where 60 per cent of the total cropped is still rainfed and large proportion of landholdings are small and fragmented (Jain et al, 2015;Udmale et al, 2014). The state is likely to experience warming with annual mean temperature projected to increase by 2-2.5o C by 2021-2050 (Gopalakrishnan et al, 2011), while rainfall is likely to show a slight decrease (Kumar et al, 2006). These future projections of climate variability indicate greater frequency of extremes, evaporation and shortage of water,which will adversely affect crop yields and livelihood sustainability.Keeping this in view, this paper attempts to assess and quantify climate change vulnerability in semi-arid and arid regions of Rajasthan, India using multi-dimensional set of indicators
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