Page 19 - Module_9_en

Module

events, such as floods and earthquakes. A third type of assessment is focused on the multiple
causes of a single effect; for example, food security studies generally focused on hunger or
famine. Such studies see hunger as the consequence of a number of stresses and issues such
as drought, political marginalization, inequality, global market changes, land degradation and

other environmental stresses.

The emerging field of currently-conducted vulnerability assessments draws heavily from
these three streams. Thus, the novelty is not so much the development of new conceptual Abu Dhabi, UAE
domains, but the integration across these three traditions.

Source: Schroter, et al., 2005 (modified)

3.2 Vulnerability to climate change
When focusing on climate change, vulnerability could be described as the degree to which a system is
susceptible to, or unable to cope with, the adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability

and extremes (Figure 3). The term vulnerability may therefore refer to the people and communities
living in a specific system, including the vulnerable system itself (e.g., low-lying islands or coastal cities); the
impacts of this system (e.g., flooding of coastal cities and agricultural lands or forced migration); or the
mechanism causing these impacts (e.g., disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet) (UNEP, 2009).

Figure 3 Components of vulnerability to climate change

Exposure Sensitivity

Potential Adaptive
impacts capacity

Vulnerability

Source: Allen Consulting, 2005 Adaptation responses
(modified)

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 17