IPCC Report.pdf - Adam Curry

Determinants of Risk: Exposure and VulnerabilityChapter 2evaluation, there is much duplication of effort, competition, andtension between actors.• Risk reduction is only meaningful and prioritized by local governmentauthorities if it is perceived to be relevant in the context of other,more pressing day-to-day issues, such as poverty reduction,livelihood improvement, natural resource management, andcommunity development.2.4.3. Factors of Capacity: Drivers and BarriersThere is high confidence that extreme and non-extreme weather andclimate events also affect vulnerability to future extreme events, bymodifying the resilience, coping, and adaptive capacity of communities,societies, or social-ecological systems affected by such events. Whenpeople repeatedly have to respond to natural hazards and changes, thecapitals that sustain capacity are broken down, increasing vulnerabilityto hazards (Wisner and Adams, 2002; Marulanda et al., 2008b, 2010,2011; UNISDR, 2009a). Much work has gone into identifying what thesefactors of capacity are, to understand both what drives capacity aswell as what acts as a barrier to it (Adger et al., 2004; Sharma andPadwardhan, 2008).Drivers of capacity include: an integrated economy; urbanization;information technology; attention to human rights; agricultural capacity;strong international institutions; access to insurance; class structure; lifeexpectancy, health, and well-being; degree of urbanization; access topublic health facilities; community organizations; existing planningregulations at national and local levels; institutional and decisionmakingframeworks; existing warning and protection from natural hazards; andgood governance (Cannon, 1994; Handmer et al., 1999; Klein, 2001;Barnett, 2005; Brooks et al., 2005; Bettencourt et al., 2006).2.5. Dimensions and Trends ofVulnerability and ExposureThis section presents multiple dimensions of exposure and vulnerabilityto hazards, disasters, climate change, and extreme events. Someframeworks consider exposure to be a component of vulnerability (Turneret al., 2003a), and the largest body of knowledge on dimensions refersto vulnerability rather than exposure, but the distinction between themis often not made explicit. Vulnerability is: multi-dimensional anddifferential – that is, it varies across physical space and among andwithin social groups; scale-dependent with regard to space and units ofanalysis such as individual, household, region, or system; and dynamic– characteristics and driving forces of vulnerability change over time(Vogel and O’Brien, 2004). As vulnerability and exposure are not fixed,understanding the trends in vulnerability and exposure is therefore animportant aspect of the discussion.There is high confidence that for several hazards, changes in exposureand in some cases vulnerability are the main drivers behind observedtrends in disaster losses, rather than a change in hazard character, andwill continue to be essential drivers of changes in risk patterns over thecoming decades (Bouwer et al., 2007; Pielke Jr. and Landsea, 1998;UNISDR, 2009a). In addition, there is high confidence that climate changewill affect disaster risk not only through changes in the frequency,intensity, and duration of some events (see Chapter 3), but also throughindirect effects on vulnerability and exposure. In most cases, it will doso not in isolation but as one of many sources of possible stress, forinstance through impacts on the number of people in poverty or sufferingfrom food and water insecurity, changing disease patterns and generalhealth levels, and where people live. In some cases, these changes maybe positive, but in many cases, they will be negative, especially for manygroups and areas that are already among the most vulnerable.Although trends in some of the determinants of risk and vulnerability areapparent (for example, accelerated urbanization), the extent to whichthese are altering levels of risk and vulnerability at a range of geographicaland time scales is not always clear. While there is high confidence thatthese connections exist, current knowledge often does not allow us toprovide specific quantifications with regional or global significance.The multidimensional nature of vulnerability and exposure makes anyorganizing framework arbitrary, overlapping, and contentious to adegree. The following text is organized under three very broad headings:environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Each of these has anumber of subcategories, which map out the major elements of interest.2.5.1. Environmental DimensionsEnvironmental dimensions include:• Potentially vulnerable natural systems (such as low-lying islands,coastal zones, mountain regions, drylands, and Small IslandDeveloping States (Dow, 1992; UNCED, 1992; Pelling and Uitto,2001; Nicholls, 2004; UNISDR, 2004; Chapter 3)• Impacts on systems (e.g., flooding of coastal cities and agriculturallands, or forced migration)• The mechanisms causing impacts (e.g., disintegration of particularice sheets) (Füssel and Klein, 2006; Schneider et al., 2007)• Responses or adaptations to environmental conditions (UNEP/UNISDR, 2008).There are important links between development, environmentalmanagement, disaster reduction, and climate adaptation (e.g., van Aalstand Burton, 2002), also including social and legal aspects such asproperty rights (Adger, 2000). For the purposes of vulnerability analysisin the context of climate change, it is important to acknowledge thatthe environment and human beings that form the socio-ecologicalsystem (Gallopin et al., 2001) behave in nonlinear ways, and arestrongly coupled, complex, and evolving (Folke et al., 2002).There are many examples of the interactions between society andenvironment that make people vulnerable to extreme events (Bohle et76