DROUGHT VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT IN KARNATAKA

Karnataka is a frequent drought hit state, which has the largest drought prone area after Rajasthan. Karnataka has four natural regions and ten agro climatic zones, which have different climatic conditions. Along with different weather conditions the livelihood patterns also differ. Climate change in terms of droughts and increase in mean temperature are the most effectful elements to environment-based activities in dryland rural communities. Most of rural livelihoods rely on natural resources, which are rendered less productive by prolonged droughts and increased temperature. Although rural communities adopted few coping up strategies to deal with these weather-related stresses. These strategies provide them short term relief, but they pose the risk of pushing them into deeper vulnerability. Vulnerability of a system indicate easy susceptibility to the changes in the external environment. Weak asset base and poor resilience power are the major reasons for the households to become vulnerable. In Karnataka, North Interior Karnataka (NIK) and South Interior Karnataka (SIK) regions are affected by recuring droughts and are categories as very highly vulnerable regions compared to Malnad and coastal regions. The present study assesses drought vulnerability in Karnataka with across the natural regions. This study uses secondary data and employed average, percentage, index method and GIS software for mapping. Rainfall pattern and temperature trends in Karnataka show NIK and SIK regions are highly drought prone and majority of the taluks in these two regions recorded more than 400 temperatures Three fourths of taluks of Karnataka fall under high and very high vulnerability category and majority of these taluks fall in NIK and SIK regions. The study suggests that region specific policy measures are required to improve the resilience capacity of people in vulnerable regions. Keywords: Drought vulnerability, Livelihood Assessment, Karnataka