Adaptation received increasing attention as a necessary complement to mitigation efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was largely in response to the shortcomings of impacts-led approaches in facilitating feasible adaptive outcomes, particularly in developing countries, as required in Article 4(4) of the UNFCCC (see below). It became increasingly recognised during this time that mitigation efforts would be insufficient to prevent ‘dangerous climate change’ and that adaptation would be necessary regardless of mitigation because of GHGs already in the atmosphere. Adaptation, therefore took on a new importance as an issue complementary, rather than alternative to mitigation.
Adaptation began to be perceived as a distinct policy issue separate from the mitigation agenda within the climate regime and this was led largely by developing country concerns (Huq et al., 2003; Sokona and Huq, 2002; Huq and Reid, 2004; Schipper, 2009). Within the IPCC, adaptation was given its own chapter (WG2) separate from mitigation (WG1) for the first time in the TAR (McCarthy et al., 2001). With this increasingly distinct adaptation policy agenda, a shift towards the concept of vulnerability can be observed (Schipper, 2009).
The vulnerability-led approach to adaptation grew predominantly post-2001 in response to international negotiations, led by developing countries, regarding the importance of improving provisions for adaptation and adaptation policy. The result was the Marrakesh Accords (UNFCCC, 2002a) which outlined three adaptation-focused funding provisions aimed at promoting adaptation in developing countries under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol (Huq et al., 2003; Burton et al., 2002; Schipper, 2009). The Marrakesh Accords were the first formal recognition of the particular issues faced by developing countries within
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international climate change policy, thus bringing the concept of vulnerability and development to the fore in adaptation studies (Adger et al., 2003). Thus, emphasis on studies concerning where adaptation should be prioritized, how best to proceed with adaptation and how adaptation should be funded, increased significantly after 2001. This placed new emphasis on Article 4. 4 (UN, 1992):
The … developed country Parties … shall also assist the developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects.
Thus, emphasis was placed upon vulnerability as opposed to merely impacts in adaptation thinking. Adaptation assessments and adaptation itself were required to address a different conceptual challenge; the principal questions to be addressed by a vulnerability-led approach are: “Who is vulnerable to climate change and why?” and “How can vulnerability be reduced?” (O’Brien et al., 2004: 3). Vulnerability-led approaches therefore, shift emphasis away from determining the extent to which adaptation can reduce the need for mitigation, to determining where adaptation is needed and how to best design and deploy policies and initiatives in conjunction with stakeholders (Burton et al., 2002; Carter et al., 2007).
This requires attention to be paid to “the underlying socio-economic and institutional factors, and … political and cultural factors, that determine how people respond to and cope with climate hazards” (Adger et al., 2003: 6). Accordingly, the vulnerability-led approach is often referred to as a ‘bottom-up’ approach (Dessai et al., 2004), or the ‘second generation’ of adaptation studies (UNFCCC, 2005; Fussel and Klein, 2006) that begin assessment with the broad social and environmental context of the system of interest, rather than with the climate stimulus (Ensor and Berger, 2009). In comparison to the scenario-driven impacts-led approach, the vulnerability-led approach focuses on the state or
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condition of a specific system – and the processes and structures determining this condition – as giving rise to negative impacts, given climate stimuli (Kelly and Adger, 2000; Smit and Pilifosova, 2003; O’Brien et al., 2004; Adger et al., 2004; Ford and Smit, 2004; UNFCCC, 2005; Smit and Wandel, 2006; Turner et al., 2003; Downing and Patwardhan, 2004; Ensor and Berger, 2009).
A vulnerability-led approach forms the basis of recent adaptation research and policy initiatives such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Adaptation Policy Framework (APF) (Lim et al., 2004), the National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPA) guidelines (UNFCCC, 2002b) and the Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors (AIACC) programme (Leary et al., 2008a; Leary et al., 2008b). The overarching motivations of these initiatives are to identify practical ways and means of reducing vulnerability to current and future climate variability and extremes in developing countries via adaptation processes that are integrated with sustainable development (Wilbanks, 2003). These and many other international adaptation initiatives in a developing country context adopt some form of the vulnerability-led approach (Smit and Pilifosova, 2003).
Smit and Pilifosova (2003: 20) describe vulnerability assessment in the climate change context as the “inverse” of impact assessment. However, unlike the seven step impacts assessment framework approach developed by Carter et al. (1998), there is no single universally followed vulnerability assessment framework within the climate change field. Instead, frameworks are developed to suit particular purposes, in particular contexts and at particular scales. Reflecting the vastly multidisciplinary nature of the climate change adaptation field, many of these frameworks are derived from related fields such as natural hazards, food security, and sustainable livelihoods. Addressing the state of vulnerability in adaptation efforts requires a more flexible guidance approach than is afforded by Carter et al., (1994).
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The APF outlines a ‘roadmap’ of possible analytical techniques to assist in identifying appropriate vulnerability-led adaptation strategies for specific contexts. The APF outlines four main distinguishing characteristics of the vulnerability-led approach that are discussed throughout the literature, and these are summarized as (Lim et al., 2004: 1):
1. Adaptation to short-term climate variability and extreme events serves as a starting point for reducing vulnerability to longer-term climate change.
2. Adaptation policy and measures should be assessed in a development context.
3. Adaptation occurs at different levels in society, including the local level, and,
4. The adaptation strategy and the stakeholder process by which it is implemented are equally important.
These characteristics distinguish a vulnerability-led from an impacts-led approach and loosely denote an inverse assessment process to that of an impact- led approach (Smit and Pilifosova, 2003). These characteristics are particularly pertinent to adaptation in a developing country context.
2.2.2.1 Benefits for developing country contexts: adaptation to uncertainty, from the bottom-up
The vulnerability-led approach is based on the premise that:
Addressing climate change means enhancing the ability to cope with present-day climate variability and long-term climate uncertainly. To do this there is a need to first understand the drivers that underlie vulnerability (O’Brien et al., 2004).
From this perspective, reducing current vulnerability with respect to climate conditions will also reduce vulnerability with respect to future climate
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conditions, given that climate change is expected to exacerbate current climate risks and it is vulnerability being reduced, not specific impacts (Handmer, 2003; van Aalst, 2006; Adger et al., 2007)10. Vulnerability-led adaptation is about building overall system resilience and enhancing adaptive capacity to deal with climate conditions, regardless of the specific nature of these. In a paper that has played a key role in defining a vulnerability-led approach to adaptation Kelly and Adger (2000: 326) argue that:
… the primary linkages between social, economic and political characteristics and trends and the capacity to react to environmental stress … will hold on all timescales, even if the precise response strategies alter in nature or relative significance.
A key outcome of beginning the adaptation process from the concept of vulnerability is that initiatives to reduce vulnerability are likely to have multiple co-benefits. This is commonly referred to as ‘no-regrets’ adaptation, because initiatives are often worth doing anyway (Rojas Blanco, 2006). Strategies are often “the same as those which contribute in a positive manner to sustainable development, sound environmental management, and wise resource use” (Hay et al., 2003: 63). This approach is particularly important in a developing country context where: a) high quality data for use in impact assessment is often lacking; b) investing scarce resources in an uncertain and/or future adaptation strategy is unlikely given other pressing issues, and; c) many possess a high current level of vulnerability to climate conditions and thus require measures that reduce current, as well as future vulnerability (Barnett, 2001; Handmer, 2003; Adger et al., 2003; Davidson et al., 2003; Adger et al., 2004; O’Brien et al., 2004).
10 Although of course this process needs to take into account likely future changes in climate, especially as some changes may diverge significantly from current circumstances (Adger et al., 2007).
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Importantly, the nature of the vulnerability-led approach is such that the uncertainty inevitable in climate science is not a hindrance to the adaptation process, as it can be in an impacts-led approach. In a developing country context, it can be difficult to justify investment in measures that are based on fairly uncertain projections of future climate. Beginning with reducing the vulnerability of a system to current climate conditions as a means of building capacity to cope with future conditions does not necessarily require high quality information about future climate (Adger et al., 2004; O’Brien et al., 2004). From a vulnerability perspective, waiting for certainty in the generation of adaptation options can generate maladaptive adaptation, if future climate change does not manifest in the way predicted via modeling (Burton et al., 2002; O’Brien et al., 2004; Adger, 2003). Although technological solutions are an important component of adaptation, they are unlikely to address the raft of underlying social drivers of vulnerability to climate change and these are likely to be of high significance in a developing country context (Adger et al., 2007: 721).
A key tenet of the vulnerability-led approach is that it is context specific. Vulnerability-led adaptation is salient at a range of scales and suits a variety of purposes (McLeman and Smit, 2006). As identified by Downing and Patwardhan (2004: 71), “Vulnerability varies widely across communities, sectors and regions. This diversity of the “real world” is the starting place for a vulnerability assessment”. A particularly important characteristic of the vulnerability-led approach is applicability to local scale analyses. The generation of scenarios is not the fulcrum of assessment and therefore limited applicability of model outputs at the local scale is not necessarily a hindrance to effective assessment. In a developing country context, especially, technological or top-down adaptation strategies are unlikely to successfully reduce vulnerability for those who are most at risk at the local scale, in the absence of a complementary bottom-up approach (O’Brien et al., 2004; Smit and Pilifosova, 2003).
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Thus, the vulnerability-led approach to adaptation shifts the focus from biophysical impacts and discrete technological adaptations, towards socio- economic vulnerabilities in the development context. It is not surprising then, that vulnerability-led approaches bring adaptation closer to development processes. The concept of ‘vulnerability’, however, as applied in the climate change context has variable conceptualisations and the relationship between vulnerability and adaptation is not straightforward. This has implications for the extent to which vulnerability can actually be reduced using adaptation processes. The following section examines the variable understandings of vulnerability to climate change in relation to impacts-led and vulnerability-led adaptation approaches.