Climate change flood risks and post-flood agricultural and non-agricultural economic losses in flood-prone Bait households Muzaffargarh district of Punjab, Pakistan

In global perspective, climate change severity has amplified natural disasters while consecutive frequency of flood disasters more particularly in developing countries like Pakistan. These flood disasters have raised economic losses of flood-prone farming community inhabited in neighboring of rivers. This research work focused to investigate the flood risk household level effects on post flood losses in Punjab, Pakistan. In the couple of decades, Pakistan faced consecutive and frequent destructive flooding directional to millions of peoples displaced, extensive homes destruction, numerous fatalities, crops and cattle's losses. In this study per-tested and well-developed questionnaire was used for data collection of 380 flood-prone affected households of district Muzaffargarh. In generating households actual score of vulnerability from literature, indicators of adaptive capacity, sensitivity and exposure were applied where household level risk was determined as function of hazard and vulnerability. In empirical estimation, Kruskal-Wallis one-way variance analysis was employed to measure the relationship in household risk and flood impact in term of both non-agricultural and agricultural losses. Findings of the study illustrated that losses owing to flood is not a random function of natures impact while households having higher level of flood risk confronted higher level of non-agricultural and agricultural losses. These findings focused the significance of addressing underlying risk factors to reduce household vulnerability rather than simply responding to post crises emergencies. Higher flood risk areas household vulnerability must focus on priority basis through developing flood resistant homes, ease access of emergency food supply and evolving advance structure of early warning system. In reducing agricultural losses concerned authorities need to implement mature measures. Concerned authorities must assist crop farmers and vulnerable households to mitigate risks by using actions such as diversifying crops, execution of crop insurance policy and offering crop protection feasible actions regarding climate events such as floods.