Vulnerability of dairy-based livelihoods to climate variability and change: a study of Western Ghats region in Wayanad, Kerala

The study assesses the livelihood vulnerability of dairy farmers to climate variability and change (CVC) in Wayanad district of the Western Ghats region in Kerala. For this purpose, a Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) was developed underlying the definition of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consisting of 28 indicators and 7 LVI components. A fussel framework was used for conceptualizing the vulnerable situation. Participatory rural appraisal and personal interviews were used to collect household data of 180 dairy farmers of three taluks complemented by thirty years of gridded weather data. The normalized data were then combined into three indices, i.e. sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity, which were then averaged with weights given using principal component analysis, to obtain the overall index. LVI indicated that the dairy farmers of all the taluks of Wayanad are vulnerable to CVC with Pulpally taluka being the most vulnerable with 48.33% farmers under the high level vulnerability category with wide variation in LVI components across the taluks. For the sustenance of dairy farming of small and marginal farmers of the region and for mitigating risks, policies are required for incentivizing the livelihood infrastructure and promotion of grass root level innovations.