Download Vulnerability Assessment

Vulnerability Assessment
Desmond McNeill (Siri Eriksen)
The dynamics of vulnerability: locating coping
strategies in Kenya and Tanzania,
The Geographical Journal, Dec 2005
Siri Eriksen, Katrina Brown and P Mick Kelly
• Vulnerability: various definitions:
“the potential to be adversely affected by an
event or change”.
• Physical or social vulnerability.
IPCC: three components of vulnerability:
• Exposure
• Sensitivity
• Capacity to adapt.
• Coping not same as adaptation: coping is within
existing structures, adaptation changes the
framework in which coping takes place.
• “Double exposure” (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2000)
those members of society most vulnerable to
global economic change may also be most
vulnerable to climate change.
• Comparative case study: how small scale
farmers in dryland East Africa cope with
climate stress, and the implications for
reducing their vulnerability
• Mbiti in Kenya, in Kitui District
• Saweni in Tanzania, Same District.
• Limits to human responses faced with several
environmental stresses. Factors exclude
sections of population from adopting
particular coping strategies, e.g.
• Gendered access to labour power, capital and
natural resources and skills, and restricted
mobility exclude many women from
successfully adopting specialised coping
strategies.
Vulnerability Assessments in the
Developing World: Mozambique and
South Africa
Siri Eriksen, Coleen Vogel, Gina Ziervogel,
Franziska Steinbruch and Florence Nazare
• Different institutional starting points lead to
assessments investigating very different
dimensions of vulnerability:
• Time scale: short / long
• Stressors, e.g. natural disasters, economic
liberalization
• Focus; e.g. food security, health, economic
activity.
• Trends towards linking data to longer term
policy processes.
• To identify longer term policies that target the
causes of vulnerability, a different set of
methods is needed than those tailored to
emergency responses
• Vulnerability cannot be assessed using a single
stressor technique.
• Link assessment efforts by government sectors
and institutions with those that are academic
driven.
• Southern African Vulnerability Initiative
www.savi.org.za
Why different interpretations of
vulnerability matter in climate change
discourse.
Karen O’Brien, Siri Eriksen, Lynn Nygaard, Ane
Schjolden.
Climate Policy , 2007 (73-88).
Synthesis Article.
• Vulnerability is widely seen as an integrative
concept that can link the social and
biophysical dimensions of environmental
change.
• But vulnerability means different things to
different researchers.
• These different definitions are manifestations
of different discourses that not only represent
different approaches to science, but also
different political responses to climate change.
• Can they be integrated?
Discourses and framings do matter. They
influence the questions asked, the knowledge
produced, and the policies and responses that
are prioritized.
Contrast:
• Outcome vulnerability
• Contextual vulnerability.
• Outcome vulnerability: a linear result of the
projected impacts of climate change on a
particular exposure unit (biophysical or social),
offset by adaptation measures.
• Contextual vulnerability: both climate
variability and change are considered to occur
in the context of political, institutional,
economic and social structures and changes
which interact dynamically.
• Climate change modifies biophysical
conditions, which alter the context for
responding to other processes of change: e.g.
economic liberalization, political
decentralization, the spread of epidemics.
• Reducing vulnerability (then) involves altering
the context in which climate change occurs.
• These are two fundamentally different ways of
framing the climate change problem.
• The first is depoliticised/technical.
• Scientific framings. Firm boundaries are drawn
between nature and society, and focus is
mainly on nature as part of the earth system.
Vulnerability is the negative outcome of
climate change on any unit, that can be
quantified and measured, and reduced
through technical measures as well as
reducing greenhouse gases emissions.
• Human-security framings: may refer to more
than food security or economic performance,
and include e.g. a sense of belonging, respect,
social and cultural heritage, equality and
distribution of wealth, etc.
• Identifying conceptualisations of vulnerability.
Each tends to lead to similar types of
diagnoses and recommendations;
• Ref two studies in Mozambique, one of each
kind: outcome, contextual:
• It is not explicit which conceptualization is
used, but this can be identified.
•
•
•
•
•
Prioritized questions
Focal points
Methods
Identified results
Policy responses
Conclusion
• Vulnerability reduction may be rhetorically
non-controversial, but what this means in
practice depends on the interpretation of
vulnerability.
• The definition of vulnerability affects the type
of adaptation that is promoted, hence
decisions on what, how and who to fund.
• Is it possible to reconcile these?
Quote Newell et al:
• “If the knowledge that we seek to integrate consists of
disparate models of causality, then the integration process
cannot be simply a matter of building a ‘shared language’.
Single words take multiple meanings when different speakers
have different models and examples in mind. We must be
particularly wary of superficial approaches to developing
‘better communication’ that only appear to remove
conceptual confusion—’[a] common language may still hide
divergent assumptions’ “
There have been many attempts to integrate the
two, but without much success.
‘Two cultures’?
Not exactly natural sciences vs. social sciences,
but rather reductionist vs. holist approaches.
Economics is an example of the former, ecology
of the latter.
• The dominance of the scientific framing of
climate change has meant that the scope of
adaptation policies has been interpreted quite
narrowly.
• Increased attention to the human-security
framing of climate change may raise the
relevance of climate change to broader
communities and create a greater urgency for
understanding the complexities of the system.
Thank you!