Risk free life can have a positive impact on human development. Climate change impacts are clearly visible in the district Swat and are expected to increase. The ability of individuals to adjust and recover from the hazards of climate change is known as adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity of household can minimize the risk of climate change vulnerability on human development. To measure the adaptive capacity of local household advance assessment tool is highly needed. This study highlights the factors driving and limiting the capacity of household to adapt environmental change. Household adaptive capacity index (HACI) for Swat district has been constructed for this purpose. We found that household adaptive capacity of rural household of district Swat is very low, 78% households are living in the condition of high vulnerability. Reasons of this high vulnerability according to results are high dependency burden, lack of social contacts, low income level, lack of land rights and low market value of assets owned by household. Besides this other barriers of adaptive capacity are lack of house ownership, level of education of household members and lack of safety nets. It is recommended that high dependency burden on environmental sensitive resources should be reduced, and authorities should take responsibility from making policies to its implications until results come. Supervisor:- Dr. Aneel Salman