A Framework for Developing Adaptation Plans
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mation, like Floridian homeowners who fail to invest a few hundred dollars in simple upgrades that would greatly reduce their homes’ vulnerability to hurricanes (Lewis 2007). This chapter discusses vulnerability and its sources, as well as a way to estimate the vulnerability of countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It then reviews how adaptation plans can and have been developed, including ingredients for success. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges of making adaptation effective.
Vulnerability as a Function of Exposure, Sensitivity, and Adaptive Capacity Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is likely to experience harm due to exposure to a hazard (Turner et al. 2003). Disentangling the components of vulnerability has been the subject of vigorous academic debate.5 However, there is a simple and widely accepted approach that is broad enough to capture the essence of the different concepts of vulnerability detailed in the literature. The framework defines vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive or coping capacity (figure 1.1).6 The advantage of this approach is that it helps distinguish among what is exogenous, what is the result of past decisions, and what is amenable to policy action. Exposure is a fairly straightforward concept: it is determined by the type, magnitude, timing, and speed of climate events and variation to which a system is exposed (for example, changing onset of the rainy season, higher minimum winter temperatures, floods, storms, and heat waves). But the impact of a climate shock or change also depends on how sensitive a system is to that shock. The impact of a flood, for example, FIGURE 1.1
Conceptual Framework for Defining Vulnerability exposure
sensitivity
potential impact
adaptive capacity
VULNERABILITY Source: Australian Government 2005.