Mapping agricultural vulnerability to impacts of climate events of Punjab, Pakistan

Pakistan has an agriculture-dependent economy vulnerable to climate impacts. Within Pakistan, Punjab province is a leading regional producer of food and cash crops, and an exporter of agricultural commodities of significance in South Asia. Punjab agriculture provides livelihoods for agriculture-dependent communities living in one of the most populous countries of the world and these will be disrupted under incremental climate changes (e.g. rising temperatures) and the impacts of extreme climate events (such as droughts and floods). Climate impact assessments and mapping are widely accepted initial approaches to address climate change as they have the potential to facilitate bottom-up adaptation. However, to date, policy responses in Pakistan have tended to be top-down, driven by national adaptation planning processes. This paper assesses agricultural vulnerability to impacts of climate events at the district scale for Punjab province by developing maps of the individual components of vulnerability, i.e. exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. An indicator-based approach using a composite index method was adopted for the assessment. The mapping separated and categorised districts in Punjab based on their vulnerability to climate change and revealed spatial patterns and factors influencing district-level vulnerability. These geospatial variations in vulnerability illustrate the need for a nuanced policy on adaptation that recognises the importance of local biophysical and socio-economic context to build adaptive capacity for vulnerable regions rather than the current concentration on broad-scale top-down action embedded in National Adaptation Plans.