Vulnerability to Flood and Erosion Hazards: Insights among the Inhabitants of Majuli Island, Assam, India

Majuli Island is situated amidst Assam’s heavily flood prone river, the Brahmaputra. Due to its disadvantageous location, the inhabitants of the island have to face frequent flooding and severe bank erosion rendering thousands of the islanders destitute and landless. This study aims to determine the social vulnerability and livelihood vulnerability resulting from the river hazards as well as the impacts of climate change upon the residents of Majuli Island. The study is conducted by purposively taking four sample villages, two of which are severely affected by flood and bank erosion and the other two villages are not affected by flooder erosion. The outcome scenario of the villages which are inundated frequently, do not have any agricultural land of their own and are wage earners. The severely hazard prone areas do not even have any agricultural land of their own and are settled in government allotted lands due to displacement caused by erosion. And on the other hand, the villages that are not affected by flood, have crop fields of their own with mainly Bao and Xali rice variety along pulses such as Mustard, Lentils, Garlic, etc. Thus, the study is based on the IPCC-LVI using criterion exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.