Vulnerability and Adaptability to Glacier Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF)

Disasters relating climate change are becoming everyday event throughout the globe, but the mountainous areas are facing the real challenge of climate change. With the change in temperature, natural calamities like floods are becoming more frequent phenomenon. These natural disasters affect the life pattern of people living in the vulnerable zone. Chiral is also on the front line of natural disasters be it Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF), Flash Floods (FF), spell of drought or Earth Quake. This study was undertaken to investigate two things, firstly the household adaptive capacity index (HACI) to cope with such environmental changes and secondly to figure out the possible adaptation strategies that the inhabitants of the area practiced during flood events. The HACI of the 56.5% of the sampled population show vulnerability due to low level of incomes, high dependency ratio, reliance of natural resources for energy use and living in areas that are not properly connected with road networks and other government facilities.