Impact of Climate Induced Natural Disasters in Costal Odisha Focused On Socio-Economic Vulnerability

Abstract

calamities since long . Between the period 1965 to 2004, floods have occurred 17 times, droughts 19 times, and cyclones have hit the state 7 times (OSDMA, 2011). These natural disasters have not only led to loss of human lives but also resulted in extensive damages Climate induced natural disasters (CINDs) like droughts, floods, cyclones and heat waves have become serious problem to Orissa. Fluctuating weather conditions in the state suggest that it is reeling under a climatic chaos. It has been experiencing contrasting weather like heat waves to cyclone and from drought to flood for more than decade. The dramatic change in state’s ecology and weather conditions may be due to induction by climate change. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) links vulnerability with climatic change and point out that the vulnerability of a region depends largely on its wealth, and poverty, which limits adaptive capabilities (IPCC, 2000). The socio-economic systems for state like Orissa are more vulnerable to CIND because of high reliance on natural resource, limited ability to adapt financially and intuitionally, low per capita GDP, high poverty and lack of safety nets. Vulnerability is social condition of measuring coping ability and differs in degree for regions, economic sectors and social groups. The paper tries is to work out strategies to improve the ability of the poor people to be more resilient to current natural hazards as well as to the risks associated with long-term climate induced natural disasters by developing composite index of social vulnerability (CISV) for the districts of Orissa. Working out a social vulnerability index for a complex state like Orissa raises several problems in selecting suitable indicators, aggregation of these indicators and also decision in assigning weights. The purpose of the paper to select suitable indicators as criterion data, criterion standardization derived by dividing by mean, weightage by multivariate (PCA) analysis and combining by means of simple aggregation. This piece of work will raise a debate in academic world by proposing a methodology to overcome the persistent dichotomy in different school of vulnerability res