Transcript a vulnerability/adaptation science - START

A SCIENCE OF VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTATION
Scope
ADAPTATION NOMENCLATURE
VULNERABILITY DEFINED
Adaptation to climate change and climatic variability is a process by
Adapt
which strategies to moderate, cope with, and take advantage of the
consequences of climatic events are enhanced, developed, and
implemented. Adaptation is the flip side of vulnerability. A consistent set of
definitions is required in order to incorporate adaptation and adaptive capacity
in models of vulnerability and stakeholder decision making:
Vulnerability has many definitions, from different disciplines, research-policy
communities and even languages. The main traditions are:
Poverty-sustainable livelihoods:
An aggregate measure of human welfare that integrates environmental, social, economic
and political exposure to a range of harmful perturbations.
Adaptation action: an action (i) that can be implemented by an actor (a).
Xa,i
Natural hazards:
The social, economic and geographical exposure to a hazard; a set of functions that relate a
geophysical hazard to its consequences: Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability
Climate change:
The degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of
climate change, including climate variability and extremes:
Vulnerability = ∫(Exposure, Sensitivity, Adaptive capacity)
Aa,i = {Xa,1 … Xa,n}
guide the selection of actions. For example, improving on-farm
agricultural technology is an adaptation strategy, with elements such as new crop varieties,
mulching and irrigation.
S = Sector:
 Agriculture
 Urban
 Water
Adaptive capacity: the super set of adaptive strategies is the composite of all present
C = Consequence:
 Loss of life
 Health and morbidity
 Economic impacts on production, assets or
infrastructure
 Social stress
T
A’ = {Aa,1, … Aa,n} strategies (and their elements) that an actor can draw upon.
Correlates of adaptive capacity include income, knowledge, and socio-institutional factors,
among others.
Adaptive potential: links the systemic driving forces of socio-institutional change,
(A”)
such as income, technology, and globalisation, to the capacity of actors to implement
effective adaptation strategies. Adaptive potential (A’’) is a system property not uniquely
related to specific stakeholders that defines the frontiers of innovation potentially available to
actors.
c
V s,g
Each action (Xa,i) includes attributes such as:
 Information required to enact the action
 Resources required to enact the action
 Expected outcome (which may be a complex function), and
 Linkages to other actors (an action may require approval by other actors)
Adaptation strategy: the set of specific actions (Xa,i) that that actor (a) formulates to
In order to communicate sensibly, a formal notation for vulnerability is required:
T = Threat:
 Climate change
 Drought
 Flood
 Economic recession
Risks
G = Group:
 Smallholder farmers
 Pastoralists
 Urban poor
NATURAL SYSTEMS
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
DYNAMIC, MULTI-LEVEL PROCESSES
The SEI approaches vulnerability and adaptation as a set of
relationships between actors, linking through livelihoods sto
ecosystem (and economic) services from the local to global scale.
While this is not intended as an analytical model, the figure is a
template for mapping vulnerable situations (shown here are the
domains of crop-climate impacts and agricultural adaptation.
GCM
CROP YIELDS
LIVELIHOOD ACTIVITIES
Key features:
LOCAL
environment.
 Livelihoods are linked to actors at different scales, including local to global
policy and economic processes.
 The coupled natural-social system is in flux; vulnerability and adaptation are
dynamic processes across scales and sectors.
 To understand the milieu of dynamic vulnerability and adaptation, four
methods are under development:
o Participatory and qualitative methods are required to understand the context
of livelihoods, their adaptive capacity and their decision making processes.
o Vulnerability assessment methods focus on livelihoods as generic
descriptions of vulnerable socio-economic groups.
o Knowledge elicitation techniques capture the range actor responses to
changes in their natural and social environments.
o Agent based social simulation formalises the links among actors and with
their social, economic and resource environments.
GLOBAL
 Livelihoods and their productive activities link actors and the natural
FARM-LEVEL
COPING
STRATEGIES
LIVELIHOODS
TRADE &
TECHNOLOGY
ACTORS
SOCIO-INSTITUTIONAL
FROM CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS TO FORMAL MODELS
Examples of frameworks of vulnerability and adaptation link human and
social systems (left: from the SEI Risk and Vulnerabilty Programme; right:
from a UNDP project in El Salvador), focus on livelihoods (based on the
CARE model and five capitals of livelihoods), and portray exposure and
coping as the double structure of vulnerability (from Hans Bohle). Our
challenge is translate such conceptual approaches into viable formal models.
This requires clear definitions, a robust nomenclature and suitable
techniques.
Recomendaciones de Políticas
Top
Down
Nivel Micro
Regional
Nacional
AMENAZA
Capacidad de Adaptación
RIESGO
Adaptación
Nivel
Local
Vulnerabilidad
Actores
Relaciones
Proyectos
Programas
+/-
Medios de
Vida
Políticas
Sp y elementos
Ordenanzas
Leyes
Convenios
Convenciones
Estrategias
de Vida
Ecosistemas
Subsistema
Social
Subsistema
Ecológico
SISTEMA SOCIO ECOLOGIOCO DEL
BAJO LEMPA TERRITORIO
Bottom
Up
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
SEI Oxford Office
10b Littlegate Street
Oxford OX1 1QT, UK
[email protected]
Nivel
Internacional
Global
Sites & Sources:
Vulnerability Network: www.VulnerabilityNet.org
SEI Risk and Vulnerability Programme: www.sei.se
University of Oxford/SEI/Tyndall Centre Cloud Project: www.tyndall.ac.uk
UN Environment Programme: www.unep.org/aea
UN Development Programme: www.undp.org/sl;
http://www.un.org.in/undmt; www.undp.org/cc/apf_outline.htm
Relief web: www.reliefweb.int