National Climate Vulnerability Report

The Department of Science and Technology recently launched the National Climate Vulnerability Report. According to the report, eight Eastern States in the country are highly vulnerable to climate change. They are Mizoram, Bihar, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Assam.

Key Findings of the report

• The report has developed state level “vulnerability indices” over 0.42 to 0.67.
• Assam, Jharkhand and Bihar have more than 60% of districts in the category of “highly vulnerable districts”.

Vulnerability Indices

• Jharkhand received the highest Vulnerable Index of 0.67. Maharashtra received the lowest Vulnerability Index of 0.42. This means that Jharkhand is highly vulnerable to Climate Change and Maharashtra is least vulnerable.
• Jharkhand was followed by Mizoram, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh in the descending order of the index. They were named as “Relatively highly vulnerable state”.
• Apart from Maharashtra, the other comparatively least vulnerable states are Goa, Nagaland, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Haryana. They were named as the “Relatively Low Vulnerable states”.
• “Relatively Moderately vulnerable states” were Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Meghalaya. Their Vulnerability Index was between 0.42 and 0.50.

Major Drivers of Vulnerability

The states were ranked based on their drivers of vulnerability. The drivers are as follows:

• High yield-variability of food grains
• Very low coverage of crop insurance
• Prevalence of rainfed agriculture
• High incidence of vector-borne diseases
• High Proportion of Below Poverty Line population
• Prevalence of marginal and small landholdings
• Lack of forest area per 1,000 rural population
• Low road density and lack of railway network
• Low number of health care workers
• High proportion of natural resource-based income
• lack of implementation of MGNREGA
• Low road density
• Lack of rail network
• Low dependence on horticulture trees

The Rankings of the states are as follows:

Rank 1: Jharkhand

Rank 2: Mizoram

Rank 3: Odisha

Rank 4: Chhattisgarh

Rank 5: Assam

Rank 6: Bihar

Rank 7: Arunachal Pradesh

Rank 8: West Bengal

Rank 9: Uttar Pradesh

Rank 10: Tripura

Rank 11: Gujarat

Rank 12: Meghalaya

Rank 13: Jammu and Kashmir

Rank 14: Rajasthan

Rank 15: Madhya Pradesh

Rank 16: Manipur

Rank 17: Andhra Pradesh

Rank 18: Karnataka

Rank 19: Himachal Pradesh

Rank 20: Telangana

Rank 21: Sikkim

Rank 22: Punjab

Rank 23: Uttarakhand

Rank 24: Haryana

Rank 25: Tamil Nadu

Rank 26: Kerala

Rank 27: Nagaland

Rank 28: Goa

Rank 29: Maharashtra

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2021