Assessing agricultural systems vulnerability to climate change to inform adaptation planning: an application in Khorezm, Uzbekistan

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. The current vulnerability assessments through traditional fragmented sectoral methods are insufficient to capture the effects on complex agricultural systems. Therefore, the traditional methods need to be replaced by integrated approaches. The objective of this study is to propose a holistic vulnerability assessment method for agricultural systems. By aggregating both agro-ecological and socio-economic information, we develop an agricultural systems vulnerability index (ASVI) which allows for: (i) a classification of geographical units according to their vulnerability level; (ii) an identification of key determinants of vulnerability for each unit; (iii) an assessment of adaptation policy scenarios considering their effects on the sustainability of the analysed systems. The proposed method is applied in the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan -a representative irrigated agricultural region in the Lower Amu Darya river basin. A decision support tool is used to facilitate multi-criteria decision analysis, including the computation of the index and performing sensitivity analysis of the results. The assessment for Khorezm reveals significant spatial differences of vulnerability levels due to a variation of contributing factors, e.g. natural resources, water productivity, rural-urban ratio. It reveals also that feasible land and water management policies could reduce the vulnerability in Khorezm, particularly in the districts with the poorest agro-ecological conditions. Overall, the proposed method could support national and local authorities in the identification of sustainable adaptation policies for the agriculture sector.

Economic effects of climate change on agriculture: multi-scale assessment through regional mathematical programming models

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Assessing Agricultural Livelihood Vulnerability to Climate Change in Coastal Bangladesh

“…Since agriculture is one of the sectors most vulnerable to climate change, efforts are being attempted to outline and compare different levels of agricultural vulnerability by generating composite indices based on sets of indicators by reflecting multiple dimensions of the vulnerability concept, capturing the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of agroecological systems [16]. In fact, numerous studies [15,23,24,25,26,27,28,29] in the literature have been conducted at multiple scales and have covered different sectors of agriculture, including crops, fisheries, forestry, and livestock. The primary focus of these studies was to “help policymakers identify ‘hotspots’ in allocating adaptation resources, communicate climate risks to the public, monitor the effects of adaptation measures, and understand the weakness in the socio-ecological system that leads to vulnerability” [30].…”

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