3 Concepts and approaches for analysing adaptation to climate change
3.2 Vulnerability and poverty and their reduction
Vulnerability is exposure to livelihood risks and the incapacity of the peo-ple to cope (Chambers 1989; Wisner et al. 2004). Conceptually, vulner-ability has an external side of risks, shocks, and stress, which individuals or household are subjected to, and the internal side, which is defenceless-ness, signifying a lack of means to cope without a damaging loss (Cham-bers 1989). In system dimensions, vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of cli-mate change, including clicli-mate variability and extremes. "Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity" (IPCC 2007, 883). Sensitivity refers to the degree to which a system will respond to an external disturbance. It is "the degree to which a system is affected, either adversely or beneficially, by climate variability or change. The effect may be direct (e. g., a change in crop yield in re-sponse to a change in the mean, range or variability of temperature) or indirect (e. g., damages caused by an increase in the frequency of coastal flooding due to sea-level rise)" (IPCC 2007, 881). Vulnerability is specific to exposures; hence an SES can be vulnerable to disturbance A but not to B.
Three principal components of vulnerability are usually identified (Cham-bers 1989; Wisner et al. 2004; Eriksen / O’Brien 2007), namely:
1. The risk of exposure to a stress event, for example climate change-induced extreme drought. Exposure may thus be in both climatic and social dimensions. Climatically, exposure reflects the probability of a climatic hazard occurring and that its severity may vary, both be-tween areas and population groups and bebe-tween different events.
However, this exposure dimension seems to be the most challenging component of vulnerability, considering the uncertainties identified in the previous chapter, the complexity of climate and the time-lagged effects of mitigation measures. The social dimension of exposure re-fers to the construction of social, economic and political factors that place specific population categories at risk. This dimension of expo-sure is equally challenging, although the understanding of these so-cial, economic and political problems seems more advanced than that of understanding the problem of climate change.
with its livelihood more or less intact, will depend on the type of cli-matic event, the options (endowments/entitlements) open to the population and their ability to utilise those options. In this sense, pov-erty is often linked to vulnerability.
3. The vulnerability context (the livelihood context) – The ability of the social structure (society) to maintain or enhance the adaptive capacity of the population. This relates to the construction and interaction of social, economic and political factors: for example, political and eco-nomic marginalisation, neglect of enhancement of adaptive capacity, weak institutional frameworks and social networks, as well as market failures, influence the ability to cope or recover. These factors and their interactions place specific population categories, activities or the environment at risk. However, they (factors) are context specific and in continuous flux.
This study regards vulnerability as an inherent property of the SSA agri-cultural system. It is the pre-existing/current inability to cope with and recover from external stressors. Socioeconomic and political factors (Wisner et al. 2004) as well as the magnitude of climate change determine this inability. Thus, for this study vulnerability is a starting point of analy-sis (cf. Kelly / Adger 2000; O’Brien et al. 2004). The assumption is that the vulnerability of any individual, social group or SES to natural hazards is determined primarily by their current state and capacity to respond to a particular hazard. Therefore, addressing the current vulnerability will re-duce vulnerability to future climate conditions (Burton et al. 2002) and increase resilience.
Vulnerability is often associated with poverty. However, what poverty is depends on who asks and who answers the question (Chambers 2006).
Whether poverty is material lack or want, a shortfall in consumption and income, or deprivation in various dimensions, poverty denotes a "lack" of various livelihood resources. This "lack" inherently captures the incapacity to deal with risks, thereby making poor people vulnerable to a wide range of risks and shocks. Most often, poor people are the ones that suffer more injury, loss, death or harm from climatic events and have less capacity to recover (Ifejika Speranza 2006b; Eriksen / O’Brien 2007). Thus, poverty contributes to vulnerability and vulnerability to climate change and this development can exacerbate poverty. This interaction with vulnerability leads to a blurred distinction between poverty and vulnerability and makes distinguishing both concepts key to achieving conceptual and analytical
clarity, as well as designing sustainable adaptation measures. Poverty can be linked to the three dimensions of vulnerability (Eriksen / O’Brien 2007).
Linkage 1. Exposure to risk (for example, climate change induced ex-treme drought) – This entails reducing risks (for example, climate risks) to current ways of securing well-being. How-ever, exposures are location and time-specific. One may be wealthy and vulnerable to drought (for example, wealthy livestock owners living in the drought prone arid and semi-arid lands).
Linkage 2. Strengthening the adaptive capacity of the poor. This entails improving the livelihood assets of the poor and reducing vulnerability to drought, even before the occurrence of the drought.
Linkage 3. Processes generating vulnerability (causes of vulnerability).
This addresses the causes of vulnerability among the poor:
socio-economic and political processes shape the vulner-ability of the affected population to drought and food inse-curity. Sometimes, development contributes to increased vulnerability, e. g. in some areas local seed varieties that are well adapted to the local climate conditions are disappearing because of agricultural development projects (Orindi / Ochieng 2005).
The size of the overlap between poverty and vulnerability depends on the particular context. According to Eriksen and O’Brien (2007, 340 ff.), fac-tors that lead to failure to secure well-being define this overlap. For the authors, sustainable adaptation measures (Figure 5) are those that address the overlaps / inter-linkages and should contribute positively to one link-age and at least do not contribute negatively to the other two. Therefore, policies and interventions should focus on the area of overlap between poverty and vulnerability.
Past, current and potential future practices and conditions shape vulner-ability and poverty. Hence, both can be area specific, people specific or activity specific. However, there is no one to one mapping between pov-erty and vulnerability. Not all poor people are vulnerable all of the time and in the same ways (Wisner et al. 2004; Eriksen / O’Brien 2007).
Figure 5: Vulnerability-poverty linkages and sustainable adaptation measures
Source: Eriksen / O’Brien 2007 (with permission)
Both poverty and vulnerability reduction measures have similar objectives;
to improve the well-being of the poor but approach the problem from dif-ferent angles (Eriksen / O’Brien 2007, 342). Vulnerability reduction fo-cuses on responses that reduce risks and address processes that influence well-being and adaptive capacity. Poverty reduction measures depend on how poverty is defined. Using a welfare approach to poverty definition means focusing solely on economic growth as a tool for poverty reduction but this is criticized, as it tends to ignore non-material, non-economic aspects of poverty and the processes of exclusion and marginalisation that cause poverty (Eriksen / O’Brien 2007, 341).
There is need to address both of these factors in order to achieve sustain-able adaptation measures. However, not every adaptation or vulnerability measure contributes to poverty alleviation and not every poverty reduction measure reduces vulnerability to climate change (Eriksen / O’Brien 2007).
For any particular case, the conditions that create poverty may not be the same as those that create vulnerability.
The mode of implementing adaptation measures must capture the speci-ficity of both the vulnerability and poverty context, as there is no "one-size-fits all" response to poverty and climate change (Eriksen / O’Brien 2007). Hence targeting vulnerability-poverty linkages is a key to sustain-able adaptation measures.