Climate Change and Livelihood Vulnerability of the Local Population on Sagar Island, India

Abstract

This paper attempts to assess the vulnerability to climate change of human communities in selected mouzas of Sagar Island, South 24 Parganas District of India. A primary household survey has been conducted to collect data on socio-demographic profile, livelihood strategy, health, food, water, social network, natural disaster and climate variation indicators, were selected for Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and Livelihood Vulnerability Index-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC) analyses to measure and compare the vulnerability of mouzas (administrative unit) currently suffering from frequent flooding, coastal erosion and embankment breaching on an annual basis. Secondary data collected from the Indian Meteorological Department, the Water Resources Information System of India and the Global Sea Level Observing System have been used to identify dynamics of climate change by employing statistical and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. A GPS survey has been conducted to identify locations of embankment breaching, and satellite images obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Geological Survey (NASA USGS) Government website have been applied to shoreline and land use change detection, using a supervised maximum likelihood classification. The results indicate that the study area has experienced increasing temperature, changing precipitation patterns, rise in sea level, higher storm surges, shoreline change, constant land loss, embankment breaching and changing land use, which have had impact on vulnerability, particularly of poorer people. The LVI (0.48 to 0.68) and LVI-IPCC (0.04 to 0.14) scores suggest that the populations of Dhablat, Bankimnagar, Sumatinagar, Muri Ganga and Sibpur mouzas are highly vulnerable (LVI scores of 0.60 to 0.68 and LVI-IPCC scores of 0.11 to 0.14) to climate change both because the communities are more exposed to it, and because poor access to food, health facilities and water makes them extremely sensitive to it and lowers their adaptive capacity. The findings of this study could be crucial to framing further development and adaptation strategies relating to climate change, and to safeguarding the estuarine ecosystem and the vulnerable population.

Technical and Social Approaches to Study Shoreline Change of Kuakata, Bangladesh

“…Along with a gentle slope into the Bay of Bengal, this wide sandy beach area has patches of mangrove trees behind it which withstand the perpetual forces of the tides. In addition, population dynamics (Ericson et al, 2006) of this coastal area and how the shoreline change may affect livelihoods (Mukherjee et al, 2019) are important considerations.…”

Proposing an ensemble machine learning based drought vulnerability index using M5P, dagging, random sub-space and rotation forest models

“…The vulnerability manifests itself in certain places at various times, indicating that it is context-, place-and time-specific, as well as particular to the viewpoint of the individual judging it (Germain and Knight 2021). In the fields of geography, agricultural science, water resources, climate science and social science, numerous studies on assessment of vulnerability have been conducted (Mukherjee et al 2019). Some scholars have established quantitative methods of drought vulnerability (Han and Zhang 2018;Hurlbert and Gupta 2019;Sharafi et al 2020), whereas others have tried to conceptualise the character of vulnerability from different theoretical perspectives (Kaufman et al 2020).…”

Vulnerability and Risk Assessment to Climate Change in Sagar Island, India

“…Sagar Island has encountered the impacts of climate change in the form of rising sea levels, tidal surges, increased soil salinity, violent cyclones, and severe coastal erosion [15,16]. Part of an archipelago of 102 islands in the Sundarban coastal region, Sagar Island is the most significant.…”