Development of household vulnerability index to climate change induced drought: empirical evidence from rural farm households in Tamil Nadu, India

Household vulnerability has an important role in understanding its effects on socio-economic conditions. Tamil Nadu is one among the highly vulnerable Indian states to drought affecting agriculture and allied sectors. This research develops a novel household drought vulnerability index (HDVI) for 300 rural farm households in Tamil Nadu, India using crop and dairy indicators, following the approach of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Three districts were randomly selected from high (Ramanathapuram), moderate (Nagapattinam), and less (Erode) vulnerable categories of Tamil Nadu. The exposure index was calculated using secondary data on climate variables for 30 years (1984 to 2013), while sensitivity index and adaptive capacity index were calculated using primary data on various indicators for the agricultural year 2017-18. Principal component analysis (PCA) was employed for assigning weights to the normalized indicators. The highest weightage was found in the minimum temperature trend for rabi season (9.08) for exposure, the annual loss value of paddy crop due to drought (3.49) for sensitivity, and farm size (4.44) for adaptive capacity. Then, the households were classified into high [117 (39%)], moderate [69 (23%)] and less [114 (38%)] drought-vulnerable based on HDVI. Ramanathapuram (0.86) was highest in vulnerability, succeeded by Nagapattinam (0.60), whereas Erode (0.34) had the lowest. Besides, as per the vulnerability mapping, 82% of households in Ramanathapuram and 84% of households in Erode were high and low vulnerable to drought, respectively. More exposure and sensitivity in addition to less adaptive capacity in Ramanathapuram may be the reason for this, while vice-versa in Erode. Hence, government and policymakers could focus on regional level adaptation strategies in different vulnerable districts and give special attention to the understandings of local people to alleviate household vulnerability.