Vulnerability Assessment to Drought in Municipalities of Semiarid Region in Paraíba State, Brazil

The Brazilian semi-arid region has a long historical picture of droughts. Thereby, the promotion of development and improvements in the quality of life has been compromised by such occurrences, thus increasing vulnerability in this region. Droughts of moderate intensity, which previously caused only small impact, can currently result in serious economic consequences and major impacts on the population. Therefore, it can be difficult to identify if it is the droughts frequency that is increasing or it is because there is a socioenvironmental vulnerability that has caused problems of development of the region and loss of quality of populations’ life. The objective of this study was to evaluate the socioenvironmental vulnerability to droughts in the municipalities of Cabaceiras, Cajazeiras, Patos and Princesa Isabel, using multi-thematic indicators. The methodology consisted in the adaptation and application of the indicators of vulnerability to drought that consider the vulnerability from the simple arithmetic mean of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity factors, using data from municipalities, from governmental and non-governmental agencies, from official websites and field works. According to the general results, the municipality of Cabaceiras presented the highest value of exposure and the lowest was Patos, values influenced mainly by the climatic characteristics of these municipalities. Regarding to the sensitivity indicator, the municipality that presented the highest value was Cabaceiras. Regarding to the indicator of Adaptive capacity, the municipality of Cabaceiras returned to show the worst performance, especially concerning to the sub-indicator of governability that stands out when compared to the other municipalities studied. The analyzes carried out by the comparison means between the studied municipalities allowed to identify that the municipality of Cabaceiras was considered the most vulnerable, being classified as Medium vulnerability. Cajazeiras was the one with the lowest vulnerability index, but also classified as Medium Vulnerability. With the application of the vulnerability index methodology and the spatialisation of the results, it is expected that the research can subsidize the promotion of a better understanding of the vulnerability situation to the droughts phenomenon, in a regional view, due to the easy visualization that Perception of the problems with a broader interpretation.