On the Study of Vulnerability to Climate Change/Variability

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Despite the large number of disciplines and traditions that have contributed to the study of vulnerability/adaptation to climatic impacts, three perspectives of vulnerability are essential: bio-physical perspective, social-economic-political perspective, and resilience perspective.  The bio-physical perspective of vulnerability refers to the risk and impact of exposure to climatic hazards. The social-economic-political perspective of vulnerability refers to a particular group or social unit of exposure and especially to the social-economic-political structures and institutions. The recent "resilience thinking" describes vulnerability as a dynamic property of a system, and explains it as the opposite of resilience, which is defined as "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still remain its basic function and structure under changes."

There are, in general, three kinds of research according to the purpose of research: (i) explaining vulnerability by attributes and causal processes of a system, (ii) assessing vulnerability, and (iii) identifying options to reduce vulnerability.

The first kind of research aims to understand why people are vulnerable and what make them vulnerable. It mostly looks at the attributes and processes of human systems to identify sources for vulnerability or key factors that determine adaptive capacity. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to reveal the attributes and causal processes underlying vulnerability/adaptive capacity. By identifying the processes and constraints in the human system that make people vulnerable, this kind of research can generate insights for policy makers to improve the processes and eliminate constraints at the system level. It can also generate insights into what individuals can do to reduce vulnerability or enhance adaptive capacity. 

The second kind of research produces an assessment of vulnerability/adaptive capacity. The goal is to identify who are more vulnerable by mapping, comparing or ranking vulnerability.  An assessment of vulnerability can be done across various scales from a bio-physical perspective or a social-economic-political perspective. Quantitative methods, such as using a set of indicators and combining them in some way, are typically employed for this purpose. Quantifying vulnerability/adaptive capacity provides a way of comparing vulnerability/adaptive capacity across individuals, groups, communities, regions, and even nations, which helps policy makers understand the relative impacts of climatic variability/change, and the distributions of vulnerability across different exposed units, and make better decisions regarding mitigation and intervention efforts with limited resources.

 The third kind of research goes one step further and includes the identification of solutions to reduce vulnerability. Its goal is to make the research useful for policy makers and local people. This kind of research usually employs participatory methods and involves stakeholders in the research process (from identifying problems to finding solutions). It is obvious that vulnerability assessment and solution identification need to build upon the understandings of factors and causal processes underlying vulnerability. If the options for vulnerability reduction are identified for policy makers, an assessment may also be necessary.

For the study of vulnerability/adaptation to climate impacts to be really useful, it is not difficult to see the need of integrating different perspectives. In all human-environment systems that are exposed to climatic variability/change, there are always a bio-physical component, a social-economic-political component, and a dynamic component. Bio-physical exposure to climatic variability/change determines the nature of vulnerability and mitigation options and sets limits on what people can do. Social-economic-political factors can mitigate or exacerbate climate impacts by changing sensitivity and enhancing adaptive capacity. Because uncertainty is a key feature of such human-environment systems, it is not only necessary but important to study how the system responds and behaves under constant changes. Each perspective provides a partial view of vulnerability, and a holistic view can only emerge from combining all of them. Identifying who are more vulnerable from both bio-physical and social-economic-political perspectives, discovering what social-economic-political factors/processes make people more vulnerable, understanding how vulnerability changes under uncertainties from both natural and social systems, and ultimately identifying solutions are all important for policy makers to effectively make decisions regarding vulnerability mitigation and capacity building. Together the three kinds of research provide policy makers such information. 

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