Does nature of livelihood regulate the urban community's vulnerability to climate change? Guwahati city, a case study from North East India

Abstract

There is dearth of studies on climate change based vulnerabilities of the urban people. It has been a matter of widespread debate whether nature of livelihood has any role to play in regulating the vulnerabilities of an individual. To find an answer, in a first ever attempt, this study tested three different approaches viz. Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI), LVI IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) models and Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) to estimate climate change vulnerability of urban communities from various livelihoods in Guwahati city, Assam, India. Guwahati is considered to be the gateway to the seven North Eastern states of India and therefore strategically very important for this region. A structured survey was conducted involving 200 stakeholders from various livelihood sectors viz. construction workers, perishable item sellers, farmers, taxi/auto driver/rickshaw puller/coolie, tea stall/fast food seller, gas cylinder deliverymen, street vendors/salespersons, traffic police/police, doctors and boatmen. Data was systematically aggregated and examined using the above-mentioned composite indices. The differential vulnerabilities were compared and results suggested that the farmers were the most vulnerable community by virtue of their high sensitivity towards health, economic losses, exacerbated by their poor adaptive capacity toward unpredictable climatic variations. Doctors were the least vulnerable owing to their higher levels of awareness and adaptive capacity. These results reiterated the importance of awareness and access to resources in regulating vulnerability. The vulnerability scores also revealed that LVI and Model II (M II) of LVI IPCC approaches were the two most suitable indices and could be used for comparative vulnerability analysis. These pragmatic approaches can be used to assess the community vulnerabilities and could stimulate robust Climate Smart Urban Planning (CSUP).