Climate Vulnerability Index 2019: Key Facts

July 19, 2019 Share Like Labels: bet

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The assessment has been done jointly by experts from Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) at Guwahati and Mandi, in collaboration with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore with support from the Department of Science and Technology and the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC).
Workshops are conducted by the scientists with the States for counting the vulnerability score, and picked eight parameters which are yield variability of food grain, female literacy rate, percentage of area in districts under forests, infant mortality rate, percentage of population below poverty line (BPL), population density, average man-days under MGNREGA, and the area under slope > 30%.

The study was done in 12 Himalayan states those are Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir.
Low per capita income, lack of irrigation coverage and low open forest area per 1,000 households are the most important drivers of vulnerability.
Scale 0-1 with 1 indicating the highest level of vulnerability.
The report shows that vulnerability is the highest for Assam with 0.72 points and Mizoram with 0.71 points.
Sikkim with points of 0.42 was less vulnerable.
The points of other states are :

Jammu & Kashmir	0.62
Manipur	0.59
Meghalaya and West Bengal	Both 0.58
Nagaland	0.57
Himachal Pradesh and Tripura	Both 0.51
Arunachal Pradesh	0.47
Uttarakhand	0.45

Factors like high rates of poverty, a large number of marginal farmers, least area under irrigation, deforestation, low per capita income, and lack of alternative sources of income affected climate vulnerability the most as Assam is highly affected due to these factors.
The other indicators are the percentage of area under the slope, forest cover, yield variability of food grains, irrigation cover and access to healthcare.