Vulnerability of Climate Change on Livelihood of Tribals

Abstract

In today’s era, climate change is a major concern for the livelihood security of tribal communities. In Odisha state, the scheduled tribe constitutes 22.85 percent of the total population. Over last 15-20 years, the global warming and vulnerability of climate change have disrupted the livelihood of tribals engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). Against this background, a study entitled “Vulnerability of Climate Change on the Livelihood of Tribals” has been undertaken in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha with the specific objectives (i) to study the vulnerability of climate change in agriculture, animal husbandry and NTFPs, (ii) to find out the perceived causes of climate change and (iii) to analyses the impact of climate change on the livelihood of tribals. The research design was ex-post facto survey. Both purposive and random sampling methods were followed for the selection of the district, blocks, villages and respondents. The total sample size was 120 numbers. The response was collected through a pre-tested interview schedule developed for this purpose. The collected data were processed, analysed and interpreted with use of suitable statistical tools like mean,median, standard deviation and rank. It was observed that the majority of respondents depended on NTFPs (92%), followed by agriculture (4.5%) and animal husbandry (3.5%). As compared to last ten (10) years, there has been a drastic reduction of agriculture production (75.2%), animal husbandry and milk production (33%) and seasonal collection of NTFPs varies from 30 percent to 45 percent, whereas biochar collection has increased to 52 percent. The respondents perceived that deforestation (96.5%) and forest fire (73.5%) were the major causes of climate change and due to vulnerability of climate change, 87.23 percent of tribal people migrate to outside states as bonded labourers for their livelihood security.