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that processes such as epidemics or environmental changes, including climate change, are not occurring Module
in isolation of one another, or in isolation of other drivers and pressures, including those linked to
economic globalization (Leichenko and O’Brien, 2002). A community that switches to planting cash

crops and whose market prices are dropping will have fewer resources to cope with severe climatic
events, which could include droughts, floods or cyclones. Similarly, communities that are heavily in
debt may not allocate enough resources to maintain early warning systems, regular inspections of
dykes or upgrade dykes. They are more susceptible to potential impacts of climatic events than a well-
prepared community. When assessing vulnerability, we should take into account that vulnerability can

vary considerably between countries or regions, but even among members of the same community. Abu Dhabi, UAE
Furthermore, vulnerability is a dynamic concept, and stressors on the human-environment system are
constantly changing, as are the available capacities over time.

Vulnerability assessment suitably identifies areas of unsustainability, specific capacities and potential
responses of vulnerable people in the context of exposure in particular locations, but it is challenging
to take into account whole system perspectives, with driving forces and pressures often operating
on a national or even global scale. DPSIR is a framework applied in GEO reports, including the fifth
Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development (GEO-5), that seeks to connect causes

(drivers and pressures) to environmental outcomes (state and impacts), including impacts of changing
climate, and to activities that shape the environment (policies, responses and decisions), including
both adaptation and mitigation responses to climate change. Integrating principles of vulnerability
assessment with available information on current and future climate change into the DPSIR framework
helps to develop adaptation responses that are relevant to other socio-economic and environmental

challenges. An opportunity to better understand the impacts of environmental change on human
systems is provided by the vulnerability approach (Kok and Jaeger, 2007; see Figure 4).

As an IEA analytical framework, DPSIR entails analysis of the following components, which could be

done in three stages:
? Stage 1: Drivers, Pressures, State and Trends

? Stage 2: Impacts

? Stage 3: Responses (for vulnerability assessment, only focusing on coping and adaptive capacities)

We believe that there could be different ways of analyzing environment and areas using the DPSIR
framework and the climate change lens. Depending on the scale of the analyses, drivers and pressures
would change. Below are different examples of how the different elements of the DPSIR could be
identified. How the DPSIR is developed depends on the scale chosen for the analysis; depending on the
scale, the drivers and pressures would change.

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 23