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Identifying the local factors of resilience during cyclone Hudhud and Phailin on the east coast of India

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Abstract

The vulnerabilities of coastal communities have increased in recent years, as more people have to live in hazard-prone areas due to population growth. The east coast of India is one such vulnerable area that faces the combined challenge of climate risks and poverty. This study identifies the environmental and socioeconomic factors contributing to the resilience building that helped the communities in the study area to cope with cyclone Phailin in 2013 and cyclone Hudhud in 2014. We used questionnaire surveys, GIS and satellite data, and econometric analysis to identify these features. The damage suffered by the households, and the time needed by them to return to the pre-cyclone situation were used as indicators of resilience. We found that factors such as high education, decision-making power of women, and presence of coastline vegetation of local species such as cashew and palmyra helped the communities to build resilience toward cyclones.

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Notes

  1. https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/sar/overview, accessed on 6th May 2019.

  2. https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/number-extremely-poor-people-continues-rise-sub-saharan-africa, accessed on 6th May 2019.

  3. https://ndma.gov.in/en/policy.html, accessed on 12th May 2019.

  4. http://apsdma.ap.gov.in/view-ncrmp, accessed on 12th May 2019.

  5. https://ewn.el.erdc.dren.mil/atlas.html, accessed on 28th May 2019.

  6. An administrative unit under district.

  7. https://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/andhrapradesh/tehsil/vishakhapatnam.html, accessed on 12th May 2019.

  8. The survey budget did not allow a larger number. This sample is not representative of the entire population affected by Hudhud, but represents the severely affected population at the coastline.

  9. \( W_{i} = V_{\hbox{max} } \left[ {\frac{{d_{i} }}{r}} \right]^{ - \mu } \), Wi is wind velocity over ith village, Vmax is landfall wind velocity (220km h−1), di is distance of ith village from landfall point of Phailin, r is radius of eye (24 km) of Phailin and µ is the decay parameter. It is taken to be 0.6 for Indian Ocean region (Abraham et al. 1995).

  10. ftp://ftp.ncmrwf.gov.in/pub/outgoing/indira/SAPHIR/SAPHIR_Paper/phailin.pdf, accessed on 12th May 2019.

  11. Damaged houses were defined to be either fully damaged, severely damaged, partially damaged or washed away by Emergency Department, Odisha.

  12. https://india.gov.in/spotlight/pradhan-mantri-fasal-bima-yojana#tab=tab-1, accessed on 15th May 2018.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of the IUCN’s Mangroves for Future (MFF) (Grant No. 87008-014: MFF 219) National Coordination Body (NCB), India for their financial and academic assistance in the development and execution of this study. We sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, comments and encouraging words. We thank Arjilli Dasu for help in household survey, Argon Geoinfotech, Bhubaneswar for forest cover data and GIS work, and Y. Parida and H. S. Nayak for research assistance. The usual disclaimer applies. The MFF funding was provided to NABARD Chair Professor.

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  1. NABARD Chair Professor, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave, Room-209, Delhi, 110007, India

    Saudamini Das

  2. EcoNiche Consulting, Bangalore, India

    Nisha Maria DSouza

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SD conceptualized the research, SD and ND conducted the research and wrote the paper.

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Das, S., DSouza, N.M. Identifying the local factors of resilience during cyclone Hudhud and Phailin on the east coast of India. Ambio 49, 950–961 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01241-7

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