Micro-level Assessment of Rural Societal Vulnerability of Coastal Regions: An Insight into Sagar Island, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Most of the villages in coastal blocks of West Bengal, India, are prone to both cyclones and coastal and river flooding. Very severe cyclones in recent time (e.g., Sidr, Aila, Fani, Bulbul, and Amphan) exposed the coastal population livelihood at stake. Displacement and migration are very much evident due to such extreme events. However, the existing study examines the nature of societal vulnerability mainly for the coastal villages that focus on the biophysical components. An ‘integrated approach’ was adopted to assess the societal vulnerability which is viewed as a function of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. A number of proxy indicators were considered to represent these components and a normalisation procedure was adopted in order to aggregate them into a single value. Three key observations emerged. First, components such as sensitivity and adaptive capacity were found to act as the major determinants of vulnerability. Second, eight mouzas were found to have a higher vulnerability score, and surprisingly, some of the mouzas are non-coastal. Third, factors such as demography, agriculture and economic capacity emerged as the major cause for increasing vulnerability. These results have policy implications in the context of prioritising limited resources among the vulnerable villages and determinants through the disaster risk management programme at the district and block levels.