Transcript Vulnerability of People, Places and Systems to

Vulnerability of People, Places and Systems to
Environmental Change
Neil Leary
START
December 18, 2002
CMU Distance Seminar
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Consequences of environmental change are
not uniform
• Differ for different
– People
– Places
– Times
• Responses to the risks will also differ
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Vulnerability Assessment
• Investigation of
– causes of differential consequences and
– responses to offset, lessen or prevent potential adverse
consequences.
• Seeks answers to questions such as
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Who (or what) is vulnerable?
To what are they vulnerable?
Why are they vulnerable?
What responses can lessen vulnerability?
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Overview of talk
• Define vulnerability and related concepts
• Compare vulnerability and impact assessment
approaches
• Describe selected frameworks for vulnerability
assessment
• Summary from selected literature of who and
what are vulnerable to global environmental
change
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Numerous definitions of vulnerability
• Differ in their emphases and details
• Common elements of most definitions:
– the capacity to suffer harm from exposure to
perturbations or stresses
• climate change and extremes, land degradation,
demographic change, technological change, . . .
– this capacity is conditioned by a variety of internal
factors that shape the state of the people, system or
place being exposed
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Two strands in study of vulnerability:
biophysical and social
• Biophysical - roots in natural hazards field
– focus is on characterizing exposure to a hazard in
biophysical terms
• identify spatial distribution of the hazard
• estimate human occupancy of hazard zone
• determine the magnitude, duration, frequency of the
hazard
• estimate the potential loss of life and property associated
with occurrence of the hazard
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Social strand of vulnerability research
• Primary attention given to social determinants of
vulnerability
• Causes of vulnerability sought in the social
processes that
– place people in harm’s way
– shape capacities to absorb stresses, cope with and
adapt to change, and recover from harm
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Integration of these strands
• Has yielded a framework in which determinants of
vulnerability are grouped into 3 dimensions of
vulnerability
– Exposure
– Sensitivity
– Resilience
*Coping and adaptation capacities are key aspects of sensitivity and
resilience.
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Framework for Vulnerability Assessment
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Vulnerability can be lessened by interventions
at a number of points
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Lessen exposure to perturbations and stresses
Lessen sensitivities to exposures
Increase capacities to cope or adapt
Increase resilience and recovery potential
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Dimension of Vulnerability
Acted Upon
Response Measure
Exposure
Sensitivi ty
 Anticipate exposures, prepare for potential effects
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x
 Migrate or limit development in exposed place
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x
 Eliminate or suppress disease vectors
 Transfer water to areas/activities of priority need
x
 Switch to more robust crop varieties
 Diversify sources of household income and livelihoods
 Establish mechanisms for water transfers
 Expand health care infrastructure
 Reform land tenure rules
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Resi lience
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Capacities
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x
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Impact vs Vulnerability Assessment
Impact Assessment
Vulnerability Assessment
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Motivation: how bad are the
risks?
Attempt to “predict” impacts
Careful attention to modeling
future exposure
Capacities not emphasized
Focus on a single stress
Recent experience not directly
relevant
Treatment of adaptation is ad
hoc, afterthought
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Motivation: what would reduce
risks?
Investigate causes of vulnerability
Careful attention to social causes
of vulnerability, capacities to
respond using sensitivity analyses
Multiple stresses considered
Recent experience with hazards,
stresses used as analogues
Treatment of adaptation central
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Common Ground for V & I Analyses
• VA needed to provide more sophisticated understanding
& representation of
– Capacities of people, communities, systems
– Adaptation processes and effectiveness
– Dimensions of the hazard that matter most
• Impact models can integrate info about capacities with
“predicted” exposures
– Quantitative estimates of impacts for different scenarios of capacities and
exposures
– Quantitative risk analysis
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Some approaches to vulnerability
assessment
• Entitlements theory (A. Sen, 1981)
• Political-ecology (Bohle, Downing, Watts, 1994)
• Coupled human-environment system
(Kasperson et al, 2002)
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“Starvation is the characteristic of some people not
having enough food to eat. It is not the
characteristic of there being not enough food to
eat. While the later can cause the former, it is but
one of many possible causes.”
A. Sen, Poverty and Famines, An Essay on Entitlement
and Deprivation, 1981, pg 1
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Entitlements framework
• Endowment bundle
– individual’s own labor power plus land and other assets
he/she owns
• Entitlement mapping
– rules, processes for transforming endowment bundle into
entitlements (e.g. market structure & regulations, rights to
communal output, . . .)
• Entitlement set
– commodity bundles, including food, that can be commanded
given an initial endowment
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• Endowments can be partitioned into those that
map into entitlement sets that
– include a minimum food requirement and allow the
individual to avoid starvation and
– those that do not and in consequence lead to
starvation.
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Environmental change can make people
more (less) vulnerable to hunger/poverty
• Collapsing (expanding) endowments
– e.g. climate change that reduces (increases) productivity of a
peasant’s land
• Changes in entitlement mapping
– e.g. land use changes that increase (decrease) food prices
• These changes can place minimum food requirements
and basic needs within or outside the reach of some.
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Applications of entitlement theory
• Kelly and Adger (2000) examine effect of
privatizing economy of Vietnam on vulnerability
of coastal villages to storms
– variety of effects on endowments and entitlement
mappings
– net effects ambiguous
– but can identify aspects that amplify or dampen
vulnerability and which can be targeted by adaptive
responses
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Political-Ecology Framework
• 3 Dimensions to vulnerability
– Exposure to crises, stress, shocks
– Capacity to cope
– Recovery potential
• How person, group or place is situated in these
dimensions determined by
– Human ecology
– Expanded entitlements
– Political economy
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• Human ecology: relations between society and nature
– Means by which humans transform nature into goods and
services & properties of society and ecosystems that govern
transformations
• Expanded entitlements: extension of Sen to wider social
entitlements
• Political economy: macro-scale processes
– Set/change rules for how entitlements are secured,
contested, defended;
– Also for drawing on broader resources for recovery
– Shape development path; place of different groups in it.
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Integrated vulnerability/adaptation
Source: Bohle, Watts, Dow ning
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Subsistence herders in Mongolia
• Exposed to “dzud” (harsh winter)
• Livelihood is sensitive to rangeland productivity, which
is impacted by “dzud”
• Resilience shaped by condition of land, which is
function of history of land use
• Land tenure key determinant of entitlements
– entitlements changing (large communes to private holdings,
also “traditional” communes)
• Herders have some leverage in domestic politicaleconomy to alter rules for tenure
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Coupled Human-Environment System
• Human & natural systems treated more explicitly as
coupled
– interactions, feedbacks modeled
– give rise to vulnerability by determining exposure, sensitivity
and resilience
• Focus shifted from single to multiple, ongoing stresses
• Internal as well as external stresses treated
• Responses that amplify or dampen vulnerability treated
as endogenous
• Investigation at multiple spatial & temporal scales
emphasized, cross-scale interactions
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Who and What are Vulnerable?
• Different conceptual frameworks, limited
information on exposures, sensitivities &
resilience, site specific factors hamper synthesis.
• Some general, tentative conclusions
– Individuals/livelihoods: Bohle et al (1994), KellyAdger (2000), FAO (1999)
– Settlements: Scott et al (2001, IPCC, WG2)
– Regions: IPCC, WG2 Summary for Policymakers
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Vulnerable individuals & livelihoods
• Individuals particularly vulnerable to
environmental change are those with
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Relatively high exposures to changes
High sensitivities to changes
Low coping and adaptive capacities
Low resilience and recovery potential
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Vulnerable individuals & livelihoods
• Persons w/ livelihoods dependent on primary resources
of variable & fragile productivity
– Farming, herding, fishing, hunting/gathering, logging
– Indigenous people w/ traditional livelihoods
• Wage laborers in remote areas w/ no direct access to
agricultural production.
• Inhabitants of exposed & sensitive places
• Poor - lack entitlements needed to cope, adapt, recover
• Refugees - often nearly destitute, rely on aid
• Disenfranchised - lack ability within political economy to
influence changes in entitlements
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Groups vulnerable to hunger (FAO, 1999)
• Victims of conflict
– refugees, landless, disabled, widows & orphans
• Migrant workers and their families
• Marginal groups in urban areas
– School dropouts, new migrants, unemployed, informal sector
workers, homeless, . . .
• At-Risk social groups
– Indigenous people, minorities, illiterate
• Low income in vulnerable livelihood systems
– Subsistence or small scale farming, female headed farm
households, landless peasants, agricultural laborers, . . .
• Dependent people living alone
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Vulnerable Settlements
(Scott et al., 2001, IPCC TAR)
• Evaluated vulnerabilities of different settlement types to
different climate stresses
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Primary resource dependent settlements
Settlements in coastal or riverine floodplains, steep-slopes
Urban vs rural
High vs low capacity to cope and adapt
• Vulnerability rated Low, Moderate, High
– Low: impacts barely discernible, easily overcome
– Moderate: impacts clearly noticeable but not disruptive, may
require significant expense/difficulty to adapt
– High: impacts clearly disruptive, may not be overcome w/
adaptation, or cost of adaptation itself is disruptive
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Vulnerable Settlements
(Scott et al., 2001, IPCC TAR)
Settlement Type
Resource Depende nt
Urban, high capacity
Urban, low capacity
Rural, high capacity
Rural, low capacity
Coastal-Riv erine-Steepland
Urban, high capacity
Urban, low capacity
Rural, high capacity
Rural, low capacity
Floodin g/
Landslide s
L M H
Tropical
Cyclones
L M H
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Primary
Resource
Productivity
L M H
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Vulnerable Settlements
(Scott et al., 2001, IPCC TAR)
• Vulnerability to flooding/landslides widespread across
all settlement types considered
• Resource dependent settlements more vulnerable to
changes in productivity of primary resources
• Coastal/steepland settlements more vulnerable to
floods, landslides
• Rural more vulnerable than urban
• Low capacity more vulnerable than high capacity
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Vulnerability of regions to climate change
(from IPCC, 2001)
• Substantial differences within regions
• Developing world highly vulnerable
• Developed world generally less vulnerable
– But some marginalized populations highly vulnerable
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High vulnerability in developing world
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Low levels of human, financial, natural, physical capital
Large number of poor, destitute, compromised health
Limited institutional and technological capabilities
Other stresses taxing capacity to cope, adapt, recover
Climate sensitive primary resource sectors account for large
share of GDP
– Larger share of pop. earn livelihoods from these sectors
• Harsher exposures/impacts in some cases
– Grain yields more likely to decrease in tropics, subtropics
than in temperate climates
– Infectious disease is greater risk at present; more vulnerable
to increases from climate change
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Africa
• Very low adaptive capacity, high vulnerability
• Human-Environment conditions:
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High proportion pop. poor, risk of hunger, low health status
Low HDI, little capital
1/3 incomes from farming; 70% earn livelihood from farming
High reliance on rainfed ag; highly variable rainfall
• Key concerns
– Food security, water availability, infectious disease,
desertification, extreme weather, biodiversity
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Asia
• Capacity varied, vulnerability varied
• Human-Environment conditions
– Wide range development levels; HDI low in south, medium
southeast, high some countries
– Large pop. in poverty
– 2/3 of world’s undernourished live in Asia
• Key concerns
– Extreme weather, changes in monsoon, food security, water
availability, infectious disease, coastal settlements,
biodiversity, infrastructure in permafrost zones
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North America (Canada & US)
• High adaptive capacity, low vulnerability
• Human-Environment conditions
– High HDI, high food security, good health status
– Some communities/groups vulnerable
• Key concerns
– Agricultural productivity, water availability, ecosystem
change/loss, coastal settlements, extreme weather,
insurance losses, health
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