Assessing Farmer Vulnerability to Climate Change in Karnataka: A Focus on Index Development

Abstract

Agriculture represents a core part of the Indian economy and provides food and livelihood to much of the Indian population. Climate change can affect crop yields both positively and negatively, by impacting agricultural inputs such as water for irrigation, amounts of solar radiation that affect crop growth, as well as the prevalence of pests and diseases. It is widely accepted that developing countries are generally more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than the more developed countries. Among the developing countries, India may be most vulnerable to climate change due to its high reliance on natural resources mainly agriculture, inability to adapt financially and institutionally, low per capita GDP, extreme poverty and huge population. Temperature and rainfall are the most important crucial factors which affect plant development, growth and yield. So, any changes in the climate will adversely affect the productivity of the major crops through changes in the phenological process of the crop. So, Vulnerability assessment is a practical tool to identify the systems that are susceptible to be harmed, Knowing the systems' level of vulnerability is helpful to identify and develop reduction actions like increasing the adaptive capacity and decreasing the sensitivity and understand the dynamics between the different sectors and dimensions. In this study, a vulnerability index of the farmers to climate change was developed using the standardized procedures with three dimensions: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Consisting a total of 56 items. The validity of vulnerability index was validated using face and content validity. Consequently, reliability of the vulnerability index was also verified using Cronbach's Alpha. Thus, the study found that the vulnerability index reliability was 0.846(\(\alpha\)).