Climate change vulnerability map for 12 Himalayan states developed

Researchers at IIT Guwahati, IIT Mandi and IISc Bengaluru have developed a climate change vulnerability map for 12 Himalayan states in India that will help prioritise resource allocation to address these vulnerabilities.

The exercise is unique because for the first time all the 12 Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) States have used a common framework resulting in the production of comparable state level and within state, district level vulnerability maps, the team said in a statement.

The need for such an exercise is due to the fact that IHR is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change and variability, the project investigators said.

Most parts of the region underwent significant long-term changes in frequencies and intensity of extreme temperature and rainfall events over the last decades, they said.

Such comparable vulnerability assessments are useful for officials, implementers, decision makers, funding agencies and development experts, to have a common understanding on vulnerability.

The maps will enable them to assess which states in IHR are more vulnerable, what has made them vulnerable and how the government might address these vulnerabilities.

The results were presented here today during a workshop organised by Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and Indian Institute of Technology Mandi with support from Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

"Based on the common methodology, we came up with a state level vulnerability assessment for the IHR and organised training workshops for the state level officials to carry out district level assessments in all 12 IHR states," the investigators of the project said.

"Such a coordinated approach and enhanced cooperation between states in the IHR and the departments within the states are assumed to improve resilience to climate change because several adaptation interventions will require coordinated efforts across administrative boundaries," they said in a statement.

The 12 states include Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and the hilly districts of West Bengal, and Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir.