Vulnerability

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This initiative aims to collate work on climate vulnerability from community to national level and from livelihoods to resource sectors by researchers and practitioners over recent years.

Definitions of vulnerability have arisen from a range of academic disciplines and this has also influenced the development of frameworks for vulnerability. By looking at questions of social and physical vulnerability, dynamic and multi-stressor vulnerability, the initiative will cover sectors such as agriculture, water, forestry, health and so on at a range of scales, from the household and community levels up to national and regional levels. There is a guidance page for assessments of climate vulnerability, which includes our latest discussion of the key attributes of vulnerability and an overview of the difference between impact and vulnerability tools and methods.

Additionally, our partners at AfricaAdapt have put together a useful set of resources under their Poverty and Vulnerability theme.

If you work on any of these topics please consider joining this initiative and adding vulnerability related content that you have developed for others to engage with and learn from.

Assessing national vulnerability to climate change is a contentious issue because of the implications relative vulnerability has for apportioning international funds (see this recent discussion on AlertNet).  This initiative aims to discuss some of the issues around interpreting vulnerability and the use of indices in national assessments. How can vulnerability assessments be done to make them more useful to national governments and regional policy makers? What use are spatial analyses for assessing impacts on agriculture and water resources and identifying locations where food security will become more of a problem or reductions in water resources will put pressure on communities and regional stability? The use of spatial data will be explored as a tool for overlaying social vulnerability and natural and climatic hazards. Alongside more technical assessment tools we will also discuss more inclusive and participatory tools and methods that can be used in assessing various aspects of vulnerability.