Climate Vulnerability in Rainfed Farming: Analysis from Indian Watersheds

Archana Raghavan Sathyan, Christoph Funk, Thomas Aenis and Lutz Breuer
Additional contact information
Archana Raghavan Sathyan: Institute for Landscape Ecology and Resources Management (ILR), Research Centre for Bio Systems, Land Use and Nutrition (iFZ), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 26-32, 35392 Giessen, Germany
Christoph Funk: Department of Statistics & Econometrics, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Licherstrasse 64, 35394 Giessen, Germany
Thomas Aenis: Extension and Communication Group, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Luisenstrasse 53, 10099 Berlin, Germany
Lutz Breuer: Institute for Landscape Ecology and Resources Management (ILR), Research Centre for Bio Systems, Land Use and Nutrition (iFZ), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 26-32, 35392 Giessen, Germany

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-27

Abstract: India ranks first among the rainfed agricultural countries in the world. The impact of changing climate threatens rainfed food production as well as the food security of millions of people in the tropics and subtropics. The Government of India initiated Watershed Development Programmes (WDPs) for the overall development of these areas. We, therefore, established a comprehensive, location-specific, bottom-up tool to analyse and compare the climate vulnerability of watershed areas. For this, we deducted a new Climate Vulnerability Index for Rainfed Tropics (CVI RFT ) to evaluate the potential effectiveness of programmes to adapt to climate change impacts. The CVI RFT comprises of three dimensions of vulnerability, i.e., adaptive capacity , exposure and sensitivity . These dimensions consist of ten major components and 59 indicators with emphasis on rainfed farming and WDP interventions. To test the tool, we collected primary data through household surveys ( n = 215, split among three watershed communities) in Kerala. We show that there were strong variations in the exposure dimension, moderate in sensitivity and negligible in adaptive capacity across the watersheds. After analysing the major components under the dimensions, we suggest focusing on policy orientation towards redesigning of the WDPs with emphasis to economic diversification, livelihood strategies, social networking coupled with stakeholder participation, natural resource management and risk spread through credit and insurance flexibility. The CVI RFT is replicable to similar physio-geographic areas of rainfed farming, with the refinement of indicators suited to the locality.

Keywords: adaptive capacity; climate vulnerability; exposure; rainfed farming; sensitivity; watershed development programme (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3357/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3357/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3357-:d:170941

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().