Context
Environmental think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) has carried a first-of-its-kind district-level climate vulnerability assessment, or Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI).
What is Climate Vulnerability Index?
- In the Index, CEEW has analysed 640 districts in India to assess their vulnerability to extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, heatwaves, droughts, etc.
- The CVI maps:
- exposure (that is whether the district is prone to extreme weather events)
- sensitivity (the likelihood of an impact on the district by the weather event)
- adaptive capacity (what the response or coping mechanism of the district is)
- It helps map critical vulnerabilities and plan strategies to enhance resilience and adapt by climate-proofing communities, economies and infrastructure.
- Instead of looking at climate extremes in isolation, the study looks at the combined risk of hydro-met disasters, which is floods, cyclones and droughts, and their impact.
- The study does not take into consideration other natural disasters such as earthquakes.
Key-highlights of the Index
- Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Bihar are most vulnerable to extreme climate events such as floods, droughts and cyclones in India.
- While 27 Indian states and union territories are vulnerable to extreme climate events, 463 districts out of 640 are vulnerable to extreme weather events.
- Dhemaji and Nagaon in Assam, Khammam in Telangana, Gajapati in Odisha, Vizianagaramin Andhra Pradesh, Sangli in Maharashtra, and Chennai in Tamil Nadu are among India’s most climate vulnerable districts
- More than 80 per cent Indians live in districts vulnerable to climate risks – that is 17 of 20 people in India are vulnerable to climate risks, out of which every five Indians live in areas that are extremely vulnerable
- More than 45 per cent of these districts have undergone “unsustainable landscape and infrastructure changes’’.
- 183 hotspot districts are highly vulnerable to more than one extreme climate events
- 60% of Indian districts have medium to low adaptive capacity in handing extreme weather events – these districts don’t have robust plans in place to mitigate impact
- North-eastern states are more vulnerable to floods
- South and central are most vulnerable to extreme droughts
- 59 and 41 per cent of the total districts in the eastern and western states, respectively, are highly vulnerable to extreme cyclones.
