IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Chapter 2Determinants of Risk: Exposure and Vulnerability2007), at smaller and more local scales the costs can be significantlygreater. A lack of good data makes it difficult to provide meaningful andspecific assessments other than to acknowledge that, without investmentin adaptation and resilience building measures, the intensification orincreased frequency of extreme weather events is bound to impact GDPgrowth in the future (Wilbanks et al., 2007).Work and LivelihoodsAt the individual and community levels, work and livelihoods are animportant facet of the economic dimension. These are often impactedby extreme events and by the responses to extreme events.Humanitarian/disaster relief in response to extreme events can inducedependency and weaken local economic and social systems (Dudasik,1982) but livelihood-based relief is of growing importance (Pantulianoand Wekesa, 2008). Further, there is increasing recognition thatdisasters and extreme events are stresses and shocks within livelihooddevelopment processes (Cannon et al., 2003; see Kelman and Mather,2008, for a discussion of cases applying to volcanic events).Paavola’s (2008) analysis of livelihoods, vulnerability, and adaptation toclimate change in Morogoro, Tanzania, is indicative of the way extremeevents impact livelihoods in specific ways. Here, rural households arefound to be more vulnerable to climate variability and climate changethan are those in urban environments (see also Section 2.5.1.3). This isbecause rural incomes and consumption levels are significantly lower,there are greater levels of poverty, and more limited access to marketsand other services. More specifically, women are made more vulnerablethan men because they lack access to livelihoods other than climatesensitiveagriculture. Local people have employed a range of strategies(extensification, intensification, diversification, and migration) tomanage climate variability but these have sometimes had undesirableenvironmental outcomes, which have increased their vulnerability. Inthe absence of opportunities to fundamentally change their livelihoodoptions, we see here an example of short-term coping rather than longtermclimate adaptation (Paavola, 2008).Human vulnerability to natural hazards and income poverty are largelycodependent (Adger, 1999; UNISDR, 2004) but poverty does not equalvulnerability in a simple way (e.g., Blaikie et al., 1994); the determinantsand dimensions of poverty are complex as well as its association withclimate change (Khandlhela and May, 2006; Demetriades and Esplen,2008; Hope, 2009). It is important to recognize that adaptationmeasures need to specifically target climate extremes-poverty linkagesas not all poverty reduction measures reduce vulnerability to climateextremes and vice versa. Further, measures are required across scalesbecause the drivers of poverty, although felt at a local level, maynecessitate tackling political and economic issues at a larger scale(Eriksen and O’Brien, 2007; K. O’Brien et al., 2008).Given the relationship between poverty and vulnerability, it can beargued (Tol et al., 2004) that economic growth could reduce vulnerability(with caveats). However, increasing economic growth would notnecessarily decrease climate impacts because it has the potential tosimultaneously increase greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore,growth is often reliant on critical infrastructure which itself may beaffected by extreme events. There are many questions still to beanswered by research about the impacts of varying economic policychanges including the pursuit of narrow development trajectoriesand how this might shape vulnerability (Tol et al., 2004; UNDP, 2004;UNISDR, 2004)2.5.4. Interactions, Cross-Cutting Themes, and IntegrationsThis section began by breaking down the vulnerability concept into itsconstitutive dimensions, with evidence derived from a number ofdiscrete research and policy communities (e.g., disaster risk reduction;climate change adaptation; environmental management; and povertyreduction) that have largely worked independently (Thomalla et al.,2006). Increasingly it is recognized that collaboration and integration isnecessary both to set appropriate policy agendas and to betterunderstand the topic of interest (K. O’Brien et al., 2008), althoughMcLaughlin and Dietz (2008) have made a critical analysis of theabsence of an integrated perspective on the interrelated dynamics ofsocial structure, human agency, and the environment.Reviewing singular dimensions of vulnerability cannot provide anappropriate level of synthesis. Considerable conceptual advances arosefrom the early recognition that so-called natural disasters were not‘natural’ at all (O’Keefe et al., 1976) but were the result of structuralinequalities rooted in political economy. This critique required analysisof more than the hazard component (Blaikie et al., 1994). Further, itdemonstrated how crossing disciplinary and other boundaries (e.g.,those separating disaster and development, or developed and developingcountries) can be fruitful in better understanding extremes of variouskinds (see Hewitt, 1983). If we consider food security/vulnerability (asjust one example), an inclusive analysis of the vulnerability of foodsystems (to put it broadly), must take account of aspects related to, interalia: physical location in susceptible areas; political economy (Watts andBohle, 1993); entitlements in access to resources (Sen, 1981); socialcapital and networks (Eriksen et al., 2005); landscape ecology (Fraser,2006); human ecology (Bohle et al., 1994); and political ecology (Pulwartyand Riebsame, 1997; Holling, 2001; see Chapter 4 for further discussionof food systems and food security). More generally, in relation to hazards,disaster risk reduction, and climate extremes, productive advances havebeen made in research adopting a coupled human/social-environmentsystems approach (Holling, 2001; Turner et al., 2003b) which recognizesthe importance of integrating often separate domains. For example, inanalyzing climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation inNorway, O’Brien et al. (2006) argue that a simple examination of directclimate change impacts underestimates the, perhaps more serious andlarger, synergistic impacts. They use an example of projected climatechange effects in the Barents Sea, which may directly impact keystonefish species. However, important as this finding is, climate change may87