Asian Journal of Agriculture & Life Sciences Vol. 2(3), July 2017:13-26 Website: www.crsdindia.com/ajals.html e-ISSN: 2455-6149 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Vulnerability of Farmers to Climate Variability and Change Bhavana Halanaik ADRTC, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore Email: bhavana.halanaik@isec.ac.in, bhavana.halanaik@gmail.com Received: 10 th March. 2017, Revised: 10 th April. 2017, Accepted: 15 th April. 2017 INTRODUCTION Climate change is the result of recent development trends in the field of science, economics and market institutions (external forcings). More the development, less inclusive it has been to the society, particularly poor (Human Development Report, GOK). People dependent on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihoods are often more exposed to any socio-economic changes due to man-made disasters in the environment. In addition, developing economies’ agricultural earning often lag behind price rises and non-agricultural wages are notoriously slow in adjusting to rise in the cost of living. In periods when agricultural incomes lag considerably behind price rises, farmers and agricultural labourers are bound to suffer, while large land owners and entrepreneurs operate with an obvious advantage (Longhurst, 1986). Deep economic differentiation influences the state and add to the vulnerability of marginalised farming groups, and also persist in the system making poor become poorer (Adger, 2003), switching from one state of vulnerability to deeper vulnerability. VULNERABILITY Vulnerability is defined as the degree to which a system is susceptible to injury, damage, or harm. The third assessment report of IPCC, (2007); defines vulnerability as a function of character, magnitude, and rate of change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity and its adaptive capacity. Clearly vulnerability to climate change has been defined as “the degree to which a system is susceptible (one-part–detrimental-of sensitivity), or unable to cope with adverse affects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes” (Adger, 2003). Exposure refers to “the nature and the degree to which a system is exposed to”, sensitivity refers to “the degree to which a system is affected by stimuli” and adaptive capacity is defined as “the ability of a system to perceive and work towards endowment of mitigating effects of climate change”. ABSTRACT The economic and social differentiation influences the vulnerability of the farmers, switching from one form of vulnerability to another. The determinants of vulnerability are necessarily dynamic, and vary according to the stimulus (climate) in consideration and have place and context specificity, thus the contextual vulnerability is studied with respect to the social background (caste composition) of the households. The index uses primary data from the household survey to construct the similar index, and the results of the vulnerability analysis for both the districts are reported according to the social groups of the household, since analysing vulnerability according to the economic holdings resulted in more obvious and inappropriate interpretations. The size of land holdings is dynamic, as there could be addition or decline in the size of land owned by a household over time, but the caste of the household is a static attribute, which helps in long-term understanding of factors responsible for vulnerability. Thus computing cumulative vulnerability index (CVI) according to farmers category based on the size of the land holdings is not considered in the present paper, instead the caste composition of the 304 farm households from Gulbarga and Kolar Districts in Karnataka state were considered to discern contextual vulnerability. Key words: Vulnerability, Farmer, Climate Variability