CR prepress abstract   -  DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01750

ABSTRACT: The tribal population, in an Indian setting, primarily resides in climatic sensitive geographies and maintains close relationships with their surrounding environment. Climate change drastically alters or destabilizes these regions or the ecosystems contained within them, and puts the lives of tribal groups at risk. The paper attempts to understand the vulnerability to climate change, and the resulting impacts, from the tribe's perspectives, which are framed within the three components of this vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. A cross-sectional survey was carried out among the Gondi people, a predominating tribal population in Madhya Pradesh. The findings indicated that most of the respondents agree with the changes occurring in the climate system and its varied impacts. Tribal observed those changes and also quantified the changes as well as their impacts. Their perceptions indicated that they have high levels of exposure and sensitivity and low adaptive capacity towards climate change and its impacts, with overall vulnerability falling under the 'high' category. Among all the three components of vulnerability, sensitivity received the maximum mean score, followed by exposure and adaptive capacity.The environmental changes that were documented are of concern to the tribal communities, as they directly affect their sustenance. Understanding vulnerability from the respondents’ perspective is critical in building climate-resilient tribal communities, as it facilitates the targeting of factors that contribute to their vulnerability, and identifies obstacles that create hindrances in achieving optimum levels of adaptive capacity.