Vulnerability, Resilience, & Adaptation: Societal Causes and Responses

Vulnerability, Resilience, & Adaptation: Societal Causes and Responses

Elizabeth L. MaloneJoint Global Change Research Institute

CRCES Workshop: Societal Impacts of Decadal Climate Variability in the United States

26-28 April 2007

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Will better information—i.e., predictions about climate variability and change

and their impacts—help societies build resilience and adaptive

capacity?

Answer: Not necessarily, unless people see how such information relates to their lives and their future.

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Rationale for studying vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation

Rationale for studying vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation

These connect climate with societal issues, such as development and well-being salience.

By assessing current vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity, we gain insight into current dependence on climate and can extend that insight to climate change. E.g., current lack of adaptation to current climate may mean less resilience/more vulnerability in the future.

Once the climate-society relationship begins to be defined, information about future climate becomes more important.

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Why the Vulnerability-Resilience Indicators Model (VRIM)?

Why the Vulnerability-Resilience Indicators Model (VRIM)?

Changes the focus from physical impacts to meaningful societal consequences

Brings together social, economic, and environmental factors

Summarizes information via quantitative indicators

Scenario-driven, i.e., allows different future conditions to be explored

Allows comparisons (unlike most case studies) while preserving transparency (in sources of the “scores”).

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Important ConceptsImportant Concepts

Vulnerability: capacity to be harmed; composite of sensitivity, adaptability, and exposure

Resilience: the ability to cope with or recover from exposure or shocks

Sensitivity: the degree to which changes and/or variability in climate lead to changes in system attributes

Adaptation: adjustments in anticipation of or in response to climate change and/or variability

Adaptive capacity: the ability to adjust to new conditions

Exposure: climate stimuli that affect a system or region

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Climate Change & Variability

Mitigation

Adaptation

Adaptation capacity

Coping Capacity

Sensitivity

Vulnerability& Resilience

Human resourcesEconomic capacityEnvironmental capacity

FoodWaterSettlementHealthEcosystems

Exposure

Source: Brenkert and Malone, 2005.

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SensitivitySensitivity

Human settlement and infrastructure Population at flood risk from

sea level rise Population without access to

clean water and sanitation

Food Security Cereals production/ crop land

area Protein consumption/ per

capita

Ecosystem sensitivity Percent irrigated land Fertilizer use

Water security Water availability (demand/

supply) Precipitation amount

Human health Fertility rate Life expectancy

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Coping and adaptation capacityCoping and adaptation capacity

Economic capacity GDP per capita Equity index

Human capital Dependency Ratio Literacy rate

Environmental capacity Land use measure (%

unmanaged land) SO2 emissions per unit area Population density

Example: Mexico rankedamong countries: second quartile

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

VietnamUruguayUkraineTurkeyJordan

ChileMalaysia

AlgeriaColombiaJamaica

OmanSri Lanka

BruneiBhutan

PanamaCubaPeru

MexicoEquatorial Guinea

Slovak RepublicSerbia and Montenegr

LibyaEcuador

MacedoniaLebanon

SurinamePoland

Czech RepublicBrazil

BulgariaHungary

MaltaBahrain

BarbadosThailandAlbania

IndonesiaMauritius

GabonBelize

sensitivity

resilience

coping

63rd of 160 countries

Proxy Information on the Ranking of the Resilience Indicator

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600

Oaxaca Chiapas

Guerrero Puebla

Yucatán Zacatecas

San Luis Potosí Distrito Federal

Baja California Sur Hidalgo

Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave Michoacán de Ocampo

Guanajuato Colima

Tlaxcala Durango

Aguascalientes Nayarit

Baja California Tabasco Morelos

Coahuila de Zaragoza México (country)

Chihuahua Querétaro de Arteaga

Campeche Quintana Roo

Sinaloa Sonora México

Tamaulipas Jalisco

Nuevo León

population at risk due to sealevelriseaccess to safe water

access to safe sanitation

cereal production/crop land

protein demand

birth rate

life expectancy

irrigation level

fertilizer use/crop land

water availability

precipitation

GDP per capita

modified Human Devlopment Index

dependency ratio

illiteracy levels

non-managed land (%)

SO2/total land

population density

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Oaxaca

The states with the highest and lowest resilience are similar in ecosystem resilience and close in environmental capacity, but

differ greatly in settlement security, food security, human health, human resources and economic capacity

Comparison of projected resilience of two Mexican states

Jalisco

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Assessing resilience and adaptive capacity reveals policy spaces for building both

Assessing resilience and adaptive capacity reveals policy spaces for building both

Although geographic and climatic conditions are important, even more important are the social-ecological systems in a region.

Results lead to the next set of questions about policy priorities in an area – but clearly different places have different policy needs.

The VRIM country-level adaptive capacity results have been combined with projected climate change from the COSMIC model to show that impacts may well outrun adaptive capacity in most places during this century (Yohe et al. 2006).