Presentations
Presented in the panel "From global change toward sustainability science" at the Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Community. 7 October, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Abstract
Human-induced environmental change is driving serious degradation of ecological goods and services and producing associated, and often unforeseen, adverse effects on people and places. Increasingly it is clear that these effects are not evenly or randomly distributed but are concentrated in ecosystems, areas, and human groups that are most vulnerable to such environmental transformations. Research and assessment focussing on such diverse issues as climate change, land-use, land-cover modifications, food security, clean-water scarcity, and environmental security are highlighting the need for improved approaches and techniques, and particularly for integrative appraisals of coupled human-natural systems and different expressions in varied natural and social settings.
By design, the Sustainability Science research program explicitly examines such complex problems. As part of this program, the vulnerability research this paper describes seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the incidence, causes, and outcomes involved in the variability of vulnerability across interacting ecosystems, and human societies. Specifically it seeks to
- provide a firm conceptual basis for a program of vulnerability research and assessment, one that draws upon differing research paradigms;
- evaluate and improve the methods, models, and metrics for identifying and assessing vulnerability;
- conduct case studies and modelling experiments to examine the causal structures that may give rise to vulnerability;
- use the results of research to prepare maps of highly vulnerable regions to environmental stresses; and
- identify policy options for intervening into vulnerability situations in ways that meet the needs of varied users of such analyses.
Developing more integrative and powerful analytic approaches will necessitate addressing challenging methodological problems. Vulnerabilities are highly specific to places and contexts. The interactions between human and ecological systems are often poorly defined and opaque. A rigorous appraisal of vulnerability will need to treat multiple stresses, which are often interactive and synergistic. Cross-scale analyses will be essential, yet methods for examining scale linkages and interactions are weak. Cumulative and long-term effects will be involved, with social learning, adaptation, entitlement structures, and mitigative interventions in constant flux. The paper will characterize these challenges but also set forth means for registering progress in near-term methodological research.
The paper concludes with specific suggestions for improved assessment while research efforts over the coming decade proceed.