Assessing Household Vulnerability To Climate Change

Adaptation is a process by which individuals, communities and countries seek to cope with the consequences of climate change. The process of adaptation is not new; the idea of incorporating future climate risk into policy-making is. While our understanding of climate change and its potential impacts has become clearer, the availability of practical guidance on adaptation has not kept pace. The development of the Adaptation Policy Framework (APF) is intended to help provide the rapidly evolving process of adaptation policy-making with a much-needed roadmap. Ultimately, the purpose of the APF is to support adaptation processes to protect - and enhance - human well-being in the face of climate change. This volume will be invaluable for everyone working on climate change adaptation and policy-making.

Assessing the vulnerability of human populations to global environmental change, particularly climate change, is now the main imperative of research and international action. However, much of the research into vulnerability is not designed to feed directly into decision making and policy, creating a gap between the knowledge created by researchers and what is required by decision makers. This book seeks to rectify this problem and bridge the gap. It discusses vulnerability as the central theme and brings together many different applications from disaster studies, climate change impact studies and several other fields and provides the most comprehensive synthesis of definitions, theories, formalization and applications to date, illustrated with examples from different disciplines, regions and periods, and from local through to regional, national and international levels. Case study topics cover sea level rise, vulnerability to changes in ecosystem services, assessing the vulnerability of human health and 'double exposure' to climate change and trade liberalization amongst other issues. Research outcomes stress that science-policy dialogues must be transparent to be effective and concentrate on a mutual understanding of the concepts used. A key research finding is that the most useful information for decision makers is that which shows the separate causes and drivers of vulnerability, rather than presenting vulnerability in an aggregated form. The book concludes with a unifying framework for analysing integrated methodologies of vulnerability assessment and guiding how research and policy can be linked to reduce vulnerability.

Using governorate-level national data and household survey data, we build a typology of farm households in Egypt that allows us to describe how different farm households behave in response to policy and environmental changes affecting their resources, welfare, and opportunities in output and input markets. One of the major contributions of this study is the building of a unique dataset that combines various data sources at different levels of aggregation, providing the information needed to model the farm typology. We used this dataset as the input of a multi-step procedure that includes the use of principal components and cluster analyses to identify 14 household types. To illustrate possible uses of the typology, we look at the vulnerability of the different types of households to projected changes in temperature, water availability, and water demand from crops due to climate change, and discuss which farmers, production systems, and regions will be most affected by climate shocks. We assumed that increased temperatures by 2050 would result in increased water demand and reduced yields for most crops due to heat stress and harsher growing conditions. We define three climate change scenarios that differ in the expected water flows of the Nile into the Aswan High Dam. Results of simulations using a household model suggest that Egypt is likely to experience a significant reduction in output, agricultural labor demand, and cultivated area because of climate change, although the severity of this outcome will depend on the magnitude of changes in the Nile’s flow. Most affected by these changes will be small and average households producing field crops. Our results suggest that to mitigate the risks and possible future impacts of climate change, the country will need to: Move away from policies supporting production of cereals and water-inefficient crops towards diversification of production into water-efficient high-value crops; facilitate the access of skilled resource-poor producers to capital and markets; and create opportunities for off-farm employment and income for smallholders that are using resources inefficiently.

Household vulnerability to weather shocks and changing climatic conditions has become a major concern in developing countries. Yet the empirical evidence remains limited on the impact that changing environmental conditions have on households. This book explores climate change adaptation using a social resilience approach. The book is based on primary data from the Sundarbans, a densely populated area located across parts of Bangladesh and India (West Bengal) which is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change. The focus is on assessing how households are affected by cyclones: whether they are able to cope with, adapt to and recover from events and changes; whether they are warned ahead of time; whether they benefit from government safety nets and other social programs; and finally whether they are driven to either temporary or permanent migration. This assessment leads to a better understanding of how exposure to an area of climate change vulnerability and risk affects and shapes human responses.

With effective climate change mitigation policies still under development, and with even the most aggressive proposals unable to halt climate change immediately, many decision makers are focusing unprecedented attention on the need for strategies to adapt to climate changes that are now unavoidable. The effects of climate change will touch every corner of the world's economies and societies; adaptation is inevitable. The remaining question is to what extent humans will anticipate and reduce undesired consequences of climate change, or postpone response until after climate change impacts have altered ecological and socioeconomic systems so significantly that opportunities for adaptation become limited. This book summarizes a National Research Council workshop at which presentations and discussion identified specific needs associated with this gap between the demand and supply of scientific information about climate change adaptation.

Sound and solid case studies on vulnerability and adaptation have been woefully lacking in the international discourse on climate change. This set of books begins to bridge the gap. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme Important reading for students and practitioners alike. Martin Parry, Co-Chair, Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) This book fills an important gap in our understanding ... It is policy-relevant and deserves to be widely read. Richard Klein, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Sweden The award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC brings needed attention to the threats from climate change for highly vulnerable regions of the developing world. This authoritative volume (along with its companion covering adaptation) resulting from the work of the Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC) project launched with the IPCC in 2002, is the first to provide an in-depth investigation of the stakes in developing countries. It discusses who is vulnerable and the nature and causes of their vulnerability for parts of the world that have been poorly researched till now. It also provides researchers with new examples of applications of vulnerability assessment methods, an approach that is of growing interest in the climate change area but for which there are relatively few applications in the literature. Published with TWAS and START