International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

author(s)
SM Kavibharathi

abstract
Vulnerability of a system is determined not only by the severity of climate change but also by the system’s own sensitivity and adaptive capacity to cope with new change in climatic condition. This study while examining the agricultural vulnerability of Maharashtra State in India to climate change, tries to improve upon the vulnerability assessment methodology. It chooses the district level data on climate and socio-economic indicators to compute potential impact and vulnerability index, conceptualized as a combination of crop production loss, sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity index. Kumar et al. (2016) method was adopted for estimating crop production loss. In order to determine the net effect of climate variations, both area and yield were first de-trended using a linear model. The normalized indicators are assigned weights based on inverse of variance in each district with respect to the State. The weighted component indicators are then aggregated into a single index. In addition this study also categorizes the districts beyond ranking to have a meaningful characterization of the different stages of vulnerability. The present study found 7 out of 34 districts were highly vulnerable to the changing climatic conditions with Sindhudurg, Thane and Palghar having the highest degree of vulnerability. It reveals the fact that all districts in an agro climatic zone does not fall under the same category of vulnerability which exemplifies the need for the State to prioritize research and development issues and effective decision making through “Location-Performance-Vulnerability” based adaptation strategies.