Vulnerability of People, Places and Systems to Environmental Change

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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
• 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 harms 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

• 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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Impact vs Vulnerability Assessment

• Impact Assessment
• 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

• Vulnerability Assessment
• 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
• individuals 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 peasants 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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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
  political-economy 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),
  Kelly-Adger (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
• 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
• 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)
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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

• 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
• 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 worlds 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