Vulnerability Assessment of Local Population: A Case Study from Loktak Lakeshore Villages, Manipur

Abstract

Top-down vulnerability assessment guided climate adaptation measures are relatively less effective in tackling community level challenges as local concerns are seldom integrated into the process. To adequately reflect local realities there is, therefore, a need to conduct vulnerability studies at a finer scale to incorporate local inputs into the assessment process. In recent times, indicator-based vulnerability assessment is increasingly employed as a viable approach to understand the susceptibility of the local population to climate hazards. The present paper presents the results of local level vulnerability assessment undertaken at three Lakeshore villages (Toubul, Khoijuman, and Kwasiphai) of Loktak Lake, Manipur, India. Two indices, Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and Climate Vulnerability Index (CVIIPCC), were utilized to examine, first, the sectors that produce differential livelihood vulnerabilities across the villages, and secondly, the overall susceptibility of the villages with respect to exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Primary data for the study was collected from purposively selected 150 households (N=150) from the three villages. Head of the family of each household was administered a structured questionnaire designed to elicit information on seven dimensions of vulnerability. Each dimension consists of variable number of indicators. Since the data on the indicators are measured in different scales they were standardised before composing the indices using equal weighting scheme. Based on the index values, the Toubul village (L VI 0.399, CVIIPCC -0.070) emerged as the most vulnerable village followed by Khoijuman (LVI 0.377, CVIIPCC -0.076) and Kwasiphai (LVI 0.377, CVIIPCC-0.109) according to both the indices. It is also found that in each village complex and interrelated climatic and non-climatic factors operate to impart characteristic vulnerability features to every village, understanding of which may hold significant policy values for future adaptive planning at the micro level.