Assessing Socio‐Economic Vulnerability to Climate Change Impacts and Environmental Hazards in New South Wales and Queensland,Australia

This article systematically reviews and synthesises academic, peer‐reviewed literature to assess the state of knowledge concerning socio‐economic vulnerability to climate change impacts and environmental hazards in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. It focuses upon empirical research that identifies socio‐economic factors associated with vulnerable subpopulations. Using systematic review methods, 35 articles met the inclusion criteria. These articles are analysed according to their general characteristics, the methods used, and the factors reported to be associated with socio‐economic vulnerability. This body of evidence reveals that (1) the majority of the knowledge about socio‐economic vulnerability in New South Wales and Queensland has only recently emerged; (2) more knowledge has been published about Queensland; and (3) extreme temperature is the most researched environmental hazard. Despite increased research activity over time, the number of factors repeatedly demonstrated to influence socio‐economic vulnerability is small. Age, gender, place of residence, and pre‐existing illness were the most commonly reported factors, although the influence of these factors upon socio‐economic vulnerability is complex. There is scope to extend the empirical research base across a broader range of climate‐related hazards and to better link findings from the domains of climate change vulnerability and population health.     

Climate change as the ‘new’ security threat: implications for Africa

Once it was an environmental issue, then an energy problem, now climate change is being recast as a security threat. So far, the debate has focused on creating a security ‘hook’, illustrated by anecdote, to invest climate negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. Political momentum behind the idea of climate change as a security threat has progressed quickly, even reaching the United Nations Security Council. This article reviews the linkages between climate change and security in Africa and analyses the role of climate change adaptation policies in future conflict prevention. Africa, with its history of ethnic, resource and interstate conflict, is seen by many as particularly vulnerable to this new type of security threat, despite being the continent least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. Projected climatic changes for Africa suggest a future of increasingly scarce water, collapsing agricultural yields, encroaching desert and damaged coastal infrastructure. Such impacts, should they occur, would undermine the ‘carrying capacity’ of large parts of Africa, causing destabilizing population movements and raising tensions over dwindling strategic resources. In such cases, climate change could be a factor that tips fragile states into socio‐economic and political collapse. Climate change is only one of many security, environmental and developmental challenges facing Africa. Its impacts will be magnified or moderated by underlying conditions of governance, poverty and resource management, as well as the nature of climate change impacts at local and regional levels. Adaptation policies and programmes, if implemented quickly and at multiple scales, could help avert climate change and other environmental stresses becoming triggers for conflict. But, adaptation must take into account existing social, political and economic tensions and avoid exacerbating them.     

Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

Frozen ground in the sub‐arctic region and its biological significance

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly discussed in apocalyptic terms, a spectre-invoking crisis discourse that simultaneously legitimises society-wide action, while de-politicising this very political issue. This paper examines the depoliticisation of climate change adaptation in Kenya, a country which has been recently praised as a developing country with a progressive adaptation policy. Using examples from fieldwork in Kenya, it focusses on Kenya's recently adopted National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS), and argues that Kenya's adaptation discourse is driven by particular imaginaries, specifically: adaptation as a ‘universal apocalypse’, and adaptation as a technical-economic problem. These function as deliberate anti-political strategies, aimed at obscuring the highly charged realities of adaptation. For Kenya's current political elite adaptation is predominantly a matter of reducing the perceived risks to economic growth, and enhancing opportunities to gain revenue from international funding sources. This is achieved through a discursive construction of a particular vision of adaptation, and against a backdrop of a capitalist strategy for growth. The paper concludes that a critical and political interpretation of the NCCRS and similar adaptation strategies is necessary to keep equity and justice at the centre of the climate debate, and to dispel the myth of adaptation policy making as a rational and disinterested process.     

Between improvement and sacrifice: Othering and the (bio)political ecology of climate change

In this article, we argue that othering is central to the government of climate change. Critically engaging with Foucault’s ideas on biopolitics and racism, we elaborate a conceptual perspective for analysing how such a “technology of government” operates. We review diverse literatures from geography, political ecology, critical adaptation studies and the environmental humanities dealing with discursive constructions of the other in three exemplary areas of intervention—mitigation (particularly “green” mineral extraction for renewable energy production); constructions of “vulnerability” in adaptation policies; and the governing of “climate migrants”. We contend that these interventions largely work through the extension of capitalist relations, underpinned by racist and colonial ways of seeing populations and territories as “in need of improvement”. And that, by legitimising and depoliticizing such interventions, and by suspending responsibility for their unwanted or even deadly impacts, othering helps to preserve existing relations of racial, patriarchal and class domination in the face of climate-induced social upheavals. Othering, we conclude, is not only a feature of fossil fuelled development, but a way of functioning of capitalist governmentality more broadly—which has important implications for thinking about emancipatory and climate-just transformations.     

Climates of control: Violent adaptation and climate change in the Philippines

This paper considers the limits of adaptation as a concept in global environmental governance and advocacy by examining the climate change policy of the populist Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. By focusing on heterogenous state responses to the 2018–2019 El Niño drought, I demonstrate how the Duterte administration has worked to achieve a violent vision of climate adaptation through a jarring combination of practices: exhorting the devastating reality of climate change; denigrating multilateral mitigation efforts as colonial injustices; subverting indigenous peoples' land rights; and fostering the extrajudicial assassination of activists. Though Duterte's wider climate change policies are often viewed as a strategic distraction or the isolated product of an erratic populist, I argue that these recent responses to climate change in the Philippines, which fuse decolonial and nationalist sensibilities to confrontational forms of illiberalism, should be examined as part of the larger unfurling of illiberal adaptation politics across Philippine history and the Global South. These politics, and their considerable (though far from total) local resonance, challenge both universalist Western political rationalities and new directions in climate justice movement calling for ontological inclusivity. I highlight the need for a closer examination of the origins, practices and implications of violent adaptions.     

Perceptions of Risk among Households in Two Australian Coastal Communities

There is limited knowledge of risk perceptions in coastal communities despite their vulnerability to a range of risks including the impacts of climate change. A survey of 400 households in two Australian coastal communities, combined with semi‐structured interviews, provides insight into household perceptions of the relative importance of climatic and non‐climatic risks and the subsequent risk priorities that may inform household adaptive action. In contrast to previous research, the results demonstrated that geographic location and household characteristics might not affect perceptions of vulnerability to environmental hazards. However, past experience was a significant influence, raising the priority of environmental concerns. Overall, the results highlight the priority concerns of coastal households (from finance, to health and environment) and suggest to increase the profile of climate issues in coastal communities climate change strategies need to better demonstrate links between climate vulnerability and other household concerns. Furthermore, promoting generic capacities in isolation from understanding the context in which households construe climate risks is unlikely to yield the changes required to decrease the vulnerability of coastal communities.     

Of resilient places: planning for urban resilience

This paper argues that resilience of a place cannot necessarily be associated only with the level of its vulnerability to the environment or security. A place-based perspective to resilience helps understand the capacity of communities to withstand or adapt with change. Resilience of a place does not only refer to contingencies—such as formulating immediate responses to crisis situations or incidents such as earthquakes, floods or other disasters in vulnerable areas—but also considers long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies to face social, economic and environmental challenges. To this purpose, the paper applies an evolutionary resilience framework to the case of Transition towns in the UK as resilient places in terms of their capacity for learning, robustness, ability to innovate and adaptability to change. In conclusion, socially innovative actions and initiatives are found to be a primary source of resilience through bottom-up creativity among communities and stakeholders to help improve social relations, support socio-political empowerment and fulfil the basic needs of the people.     

Developing Climate Adaptation: The Intersection of Climate Research and Development Programmes in Index Insurance

Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes. Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation. Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio‐political context of implementation. Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well.     

Climate change vulnerability and adaptation research focusing on the Inuit subsistence sector in Canada: Directions for future research

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of research into the human dimensions of climate change in the Arctic. Much of this work has examined impacts on subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping among Canadian Inuit communities. This scholarship has developed a baseline understanding of vulnerability and adaptation, drawing upon interviews with community members and stakeholders to identify and characterize climatic risks and adaptive strategies. To further advance this baseline understanding, new methodologies are needed to complement existing research if we are to capture the dynamic nature of how climate change is experienced and responded to, and fully engage communities as equal partners. Longitudinal studies, community‐based monitoring, and targeted adaptation research offer significant promise to advance understanding. These methodologies provide a strong basis for developing meaningful partnerships with communities, the co‐production of knowledge, and empowerment for adaptation: essential components of community‐based participatory research.     

Ethiopian students' relationship with their environment: implications for environmental and climate adaptation programmes

Historically the voices of young people have been excluded from research and debates about how to respond to environmental degradation and climate change. To include the perspectives of young people in the climate change and adaptation debate, we conducted a Photovoice and draw-and-write project with 29 school students in Ethiopia, through which students were given a platform to explore their social representations of the environment. Thematic analysis of our findings suggested that young people have a deep appreciation of the moral, health-related and economic importance of the environment, a commitment to preserving it and a sense of responsibility and agency in relation to contributing to this preservation. Students saw environmental degradation as reversible, through a combination of commitment by themselves, local government and the global community. We conclude by discussing ways our findings might best be taken up in school-level programmes to strengthen youths’ existing social networks for the consolidation of ‘green’ identities, action and activism.     

Climate change perceptions and responses in Scotland's ski industry

The negative impacts of climate change for the ski industry have been well documented. However, research has largely focused on key ski markets in North America and Continental Europe. The study presented in this paper addresses climate change perceptions and responses in the more marginal ski destination of Scotland. Using a qualitative, interpretivist methodology, this paper contributes through a local-scale, single-site study of a ski area where technical adaptations are not utilised and which therefore relies on business responses to climate change. Findings suggest that while local weather is perceived to be a large and unmanageable risk to the industry, and a downward trend is identified in terms of snow reliability, these risks are not perceived to be connected to the wider anthropogenic climate change discourse. Waiting for knowledge to increase before taking adaptive action appears to be the most popular business strategy; however, autonomous adaptation is taking place in the form of business diversification, which mitigates against risks including, but not limited to, climate change. This paper concludes that experiences and perceptions of climate change will be highly localised and as a result so too will adaptive behaviours. Marginal ski destinations such as Scotland will be facing a range of non-climatic impacts which will contribute to their contextual vulnerability to climate change and capacity to adapt.     

Vulnerability to climate change hazards and risks: crop and flood insurance

This paper reviews the widely used concepts of risk and vulnerability as they relate to climate and weather hazards, re‐conceptualizes these terms in the context of climate change and illustrates this development using crop and flood insurance as examples. Government subsidization of insurance against risks associated with adverse climatic conditions and weather events, such as flood damage and crop loss, may lead to individual decisions that actually increase the susceptibility of people, property and economic activities to those risks. The processes that give rise to this phenomenon are important in understanding the vulnerability of human populations to climate change. In many regions, existing conditions that give rise to flooding or crop failure are likely to be exacerbated by climate change over coming decades. In the climate change field, vulnerability has been conceptualised as a function of exposure to risk and as an ability to adapt to the effects. In this context, crop and flood insurance are possible adaptive measures. This treatment of vulnerability compares with similar concepts in insurance and risk management whereby events that cause loss are known as perils, and physical conditions, such as climate change, that increase the likelihood of a peril occurring, are known as physical hazards. Human behaviour that increases the exposure of individuals to potential perils is known as morale hazard or moral hazard, depending on the intentions of the person. Vulnerability consequently becomes a function of hazard and responses taken to reduce risk. Examples of crop and flood insurance programs from Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. are used to show how subsidized insurance might create a morale hazard in addition to physical hazards such as short‐term weather events and long‐term climate change, resulting in a higher level of vulnerability than would otherwise exist. These findings demonstrate that human behaviour affects the formation of both exposure and adaptive capacity in the context of vulnerability to climate change. Responses taken to increase adaptive capacity may in some cases be offset by individual behaviour that increases exposure.     

Transboundary river governance and climate vulnerability: Community perspectives in Nepal’s Koshi river basin

Frequent floods in the Koshi River have left the Nepalese vulnerable to erosion and recurring inundation—especially those living on the floodplains. The situation is worsening because water flow in the river is highly uncertain, affected by rainfall in the mountains and by climate change, and influenced by the Koshi barrage, which is governed by the Koshi River Agreement, a bilateral river agreement with India. This study addresses how Koshi River governance contributes to the vulnerability of riverine communities in Nepal by drawing upon ideas about vulnerability and vulnerability mapping. A household survey and interviews were conducted in 2015 for a comparative study of people living on two river islands located upstream and downstream of the barrage. Findings remain relevant because of persistent governance challenges and growing climate change effects, escalating islanders’ vulnerability to recurrent floods. The islanders’ vulnerability was produced locally and also shaped by historical, social, economic, political, geographical, and ecological processes occurring at multiple scales. That insight highlights the need to study the broader political economy of hazard production to understand vulnerability in the context of governance.     

When climate justice goes wrong: Maladaptation and deep co-production in transformative environmental science and policy

Maladaptation to climate change is often portrayed as arising from the unjust exclusion of vulnerable people. In turn, analysts have proposed knowledge co-production with marginalized groups as a form of transformative climate justice. This paper argues instead that maladaptation arises from a much deeper exclusion based upon the projection of inappropriate understandings of risk and social identity that are treated as unquestioned circumstances of justice. Drawing on social studies of science, the paper argues that the focus on co-production as an intentional act of inclusion needs to be considered alongside “deep” or “reflexive” co-production, which instead refers to the non-cognitive and unavoidable simultaneous generation of knowledge and social order. These processes have linked visions of planetary justice with an understanding of climate risk based on global atmospheric change, and an assumption that community forms an antidote to individualism. The paper uses a discussion of adaptation in western Nepal to illustrate how such deep forms of co-production have significantly reduced understandings of “what” adaptation is for, and “who” is included. Maladaptation, therefore, is not simply unjust implementations of an essentially fair model of adaptation, but also the allocation of exclusionary visions of what and for whom adaptation is for. Debates about transformative climate justice therefore need to understand how their critiques of classical liberal justice generate exclusions of their own, and to engage vulnerable people in reframing, rather than just receiving, circumstances of justice. There is also a need to examine how these circumstances remain unchallenged within environmental science and policy.     

基于集对分析法（SPA）的中国旅游经济系统脆弱性测度研究

文章运用集对分析法,从旅游经济系统的敏感性和应对性两个方面构建指标体系,测度1983—2011年间中国旅游经济系统的脆弱性。研究表明：我国旅游经济系统整体上敏感性呈上升趋势、应对性呈上升趋势、脆弱性呈下降趋势;我国旅游经济系统敏感性具有高弹性,但其弹性在逐渐降低;近期,我国旅游经济系统脆弱性出现了翘尾现象,说明我国旅游经济系统发展中矛盾在增加。基于实证研究结果,文章认为：旅游经济系统脆弱性可以分为“内生性结构累积式脆弱”和“外生性环境胁迫式脆弱”两种类型;旅游经济系统脆弱性的深层压力,来源于“内生性结构累积式脆弱”的不断积累;利他性的工具性旅游产业政策,在一定程度上会加大后期旅游经济系统的脆弱性风险。     

Global Change and Southern Africa

The developing nations of southern Africa have previously been identified as vulnerable to the vagaries of global change, particularly in terms of future climate change. This paper explores recent climate change scenarios for the region in terms of some representative sectors of the environment‐society interface, namely biodiversity, agriculture and related land uses, water resources and health issues. It is concluded that the impacts of predicted climate changes over the next century are likely to be very marked indeed. Biome distribution, agriculture, rangelands and water resources are highlighted as being negatively impacted in ways that will increase the vulnerability of the great majority of the region's population to natural hazards. The potential impact of these changes on the prolific biodiversity of southern Africa is clear. Holistic policy responses, incorporating both environmental and human development concerns, are required in the near future if a crisis is to be averted.     

Identification of limits and barriers to climate change adaptation: case study of two islands in Torres Strait,Australia

Communities living on remote islands are often viewed as among the most exposed and vulnerable to climate change impacts. This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to investigate how indigenous communities living on two physically different islands in Torres Strait, Australia, experience what they consider to be the impacts of climate change in relation to their daily lives. During this process, a series of natural, physical, and socio‐cultural limits and barriers to climate change adaptation were identified on Boigu, a low‐lying mud island inundated by the sea during high tides and storm surges. As a volcanic island, Erub's elevation is higher but significant community infrastructure, housing, and cultural sites are located on the low coastal fringe. No immediate limits to climate change adaptation were identified on Erub, but physical and socio‐cultural barriers were revealed. Limits to climate change adaptation occur when adaptation actions fail to protect the things valued by those affected, or few adaptation options are available. Barriers to climate change adaptation may be overcome if recognised and addressed but can become entrenched limits if they are ignored. Within the participating communities, such limits and barriers included (a) restricted adaptation options due to limited access to particular livelihood assets; (b) difficulty engaging with government processes to secure external support; and (c) people's place‐based values, which evoke a reluctance to relocate or retreat.     

Towards lower carbon cities: urban morphology contribution in climate change adaptation strategies

Non-urbanized areas (NUAs) play an important role in reducing the effects of climate change by providing both carbon storage and sequestration. Urban areas are responsible for the emission of 60% of global greenhouse gas, 50% of which are produced by buildings. During the past decades, increasing urban growth and sprawl processes produced several urban layouts characterized by different morphological features and a common lack of sustainable energy and environmental solutions. Investigating the relationship between urban morphology, energy demand and carbon emission/sequestration represents a relevant topic for urban planning practices implemented to face urban climate change effects. This study proposes a method for a transformability assessment aimed at investigating the transformation suitability of different urban morphology types. The case study is the metropolitan area of Catania (Italy), characterized by an impressive urban growth since the 1960s. The proposed method identification of limits and options for increasing sustainability of urban areas considering the contribution of both NUAs and built-up areas. This approach allows to identify appropriate planning tools for new layouts of urban fabrics while increasing the objectivity of the decision process. In the framework of climate change mitigation and adaptation, the outcomes of this research may lead to innovative urban planning practices.