Economic Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 473-479, June 2018 DOI: 10.30954/0424-2513.2.2018.25 ©2018 New Delhi Publishers. All rights reserved Vulnerability to Climate Change: Review of Conceptual Framework N. Laitonjam 1 , Ram Singh 2 and S.M. Feroze 3 Scholar in Agricultural Extension, School of Social Sciences, College of Post Graduate Studies, CAU, Umiam, Meghalaya, India Corresponding author: ramsingh.cau@gmail.com ABSTRACT The paper presents a conceptual framework on vulnerability to climate change. Vulnerability is a multi- dimensional process and is calculated by identifying the indicators of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Among the components of vulnerability, exposure followed by sensitivity has the highest contribution but they cannot be controlled directly as the climatic factors that influence vulnerability like temperature, rainfall and natural disasters were beyond the immediate control of policy makers. The only option to reduce vulnerability is to increase adaptive capacity. Hence, policy makers should make arrangement for increasing adaptive capacity so as to reduce vulnerability. Keywords: Vulnerability, exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity Climate change refers to “a change in the state of climate that can be identified by changes in mean and/ or variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer” (IPCC, 2007a). In recent years, it has become one of the major environmental threads faced by the world today (Ojwang et al. 2010). The global temperature has increased by 0.74 o C in 100 years during 1906- 2005 wherein the trend is faster in the last 50 years which is at the rate of 0.13 o C (almost twice the per decade rise in temperature in the last 100 years. Rainfall has been erratic; there was significant increase in the amount of rainfall in eastern part of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia. While, the area around the Mediterranean, the Sahel, southern Africa and southern Asia experienced a decrease in rainfall (IPCC, 2007a; IPCC, 2007b). In India, over the period from 1901-2009, the annual mean temperature has been increased by 0.56 o C and based on period 1961-1990, the annual mean temperature has been above normal since 1990 (IMD, 2009). While the temperature has increased, there was declining trend in kharif rainfall by 22 mm during 1969-2005 in India and in the past 100 years, the moderate rainfall and number of wet days has been declined. (Rupa et al. 2006). The change in the climatic variability is a great challenge for the human livelihood. This adverse effect will be more towards poor and vulnerable section of the society because they mostly reside in areas of high exposure and also have low adaptive capacity to cope with the changing climate (World Bank, 2010). Hence, vulnerability is the key concern of climate change. Vulnerability is “the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes” (IPCC, 2001). The recent studies linked vulnerability with adaptive capacity as it is not only a characteristic of hazard but also a property of human-environment system (Vincent and Cull, 2010; Viscent, 2004; Adger and Kelly, 1999). There are different approaches of vulnerability vizbiophysical and social vulnerability. Biophysical vulnerability is related with exposure and sensitivity of natural environment to climate change but this approach has less implication on policy making as it totally neglects the social system. While, the other approach i.e ., social vulnerability relates vulnerability with the social brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Economic Affairs - Official Publication of AESRA