Sources of human insecurity in the face of hydro-climatic change

Policy agendas increasingly respond to the perceived security threats of climate change, not least via its effects on water. Yet, solid links between climate, water, conflict and security have seldom been substantiated empirically. Drawing from the conceptual framework and empirical results of the EC-funded research project CLICO (‘Climate Change, Hydro-Conflict and Human Security’) which is presented in this Special Issue, this opening article looks at the conditions that shape conflict and insecurity, with a focus on the role of adaptation policies. We find three main sources of human insecurity: first, democratic deficits, which are more influential than hydro-climatic stresses; second, mal-adaptations, i.e. adaptations that have adverse effects for the security of some groups; and third, structural violence, often related to economic and state development. There is a systemic contradiction insofar as the pursuit of adaptation through state-led economic growth projects ends up producing new insecurities for parts of the population. Adaptation to hydro-climatic change, therefore, is likely to be a contested and painful process. Research on security and climate change must move beyond narrow investigations of conflict and study the links between structural violence and human insecurity, in particular the conditions and processes that reduce the options available to deal with potential insecurities.     

Health and climatic hazards: Framing social research on vulnerability,response and adaptation

Floods, windstorms, drought and wildfires have major implications for human health. To date, conceptual advances in analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to climatic hazards from the environmental and social sciences have not been widely applied in terms of health, though key progress is being made particularly in relation to climate change. This paper seeks to take this conceptual grounding further, examining how key themes relate to health concerns, exploring connections with existing health literatures, and developing an organising framework to aid analysis of how vulnerability to health impacts varies within society and how actors make decisions and take action in relation to climatic hazards and health. Social science research on this theme is challenging in part because of the complex mechanisms that link hazard events to health outcomes, and the many-layered factors that shape differential vulnerability and response within changing societal and environmental contexts (including the dual effect of hazards on human health and health systems, and the combination of ‘external’, ‘personal’ and ‘internal’ elements of vulnerability). Tracing a ‘health impact pathway’ from hazard event through health risk effects to health outcomes can provide a research tool with which to map out where the different factors that contribute to vulnerability/coping capacity come into effect.     

Procedural vulnerability: Understanding environmental change in a remote indigenous community

The challenge of reaching common understanding of the processes and significance of environmental change amounts to a procedural vulnerability in climate change research that hinders successfully translating knowledge into equitable and effective adaptation policy. This article presents findings from research with Indigenous participants in West Arnhem, Australia, and identifies a procedural vulnerability to climate change research, where perceptions of change and their meaning have their context in Dreaming that supersedes and parallels Western scientific discourses of hazard and risk, but that are marginalised in studies and policies on climate change. This paper argues that moves to adapt remote Indigenous Australian communities to climate change risk missing the mark if they (a) assume that a strong reliance on particular ecosystem configurations makes Indigenous cultures universally vulnerable to environmental change, (b) do not recognise cosmologically embedded risks that are determined by Indigenous capacity to take care of country, and (c) do not recognise colonisation as an ongoing disaster in Indigenous Nations, and therefore treat secondary disasters such as poverty, ill health and welfare dependence as primary contributors to high climate change vulnerability. Procedural vulnerabilities contribute to policy failure, and in Australian contexts pose a risk of conceiving solutions to climate change vulnerability that involve moving people out of the way of environmental risks as they are conceived within colonial traditions, while moving them into the way of risks as conceived through the eyes of remote Indigenous communities. This research joins recent publications that encourage researchers and policy-makers to epistemologically ground proof risk assessments and to listen and engage in conversations that create ways of ‘seeing with both eyes’, while not being blind to the hazards of colonisation.     

Wildfire preparedness,community cohesion and social–ecological systems

The consequences of wildfires are felt in susceptible communities around the globe on an annual basis. Climate change predictions in places like the south-east of Australia and western United States suggest that wildfires may become more frequent and more intense with global climate change. Compounding this issue is progressive urban development at the peri-urban fringe (wildland–urban interface), where continued infrastructure development and demographic changes are likely to expose more people and property to this potentially disastrous natural hazard. Preparing well in advance of the wildfire season is seen as a fundamental behaviour that can both reduce community wildfire vulnerability and increase hazard resilience – it is an important element of adaptive capacity that allows people to coexist with the hazardous environment in which they live. We use household interviews and surveys to build and test a substantive model that illustrates how social cohesion influences the decision to prepare for wildfire. We demonstrate that social cohesion, particularly community characteristics like ‘sense of community’ and ‘collective problem solving’, are community-based resources that support both the adoption of mechanical preparations, and the development of cognitive abilities and capacities that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to wildfire. We use the results of this work to highlight opportunities to transfer techniques and approaches from natural hazards research to climate change adaptation research to explore how the impacts attributed to the social components of social–ecological systems can be mitigated more effectively.     

Is climate change a driver of armed conflict?

The world is generally becoming less violent, but the debate on climate change raises the specter of a new source of instability and conflict. In this field, the policy debate is running well ahead of its academic foundation—and sometimes even contrary to the best evidence. Although comparative research on security implications of climate change is rapidly expanding, major gaps in knowledge still exist. Taken together, extant studies provide mostly inconclusive insights, with contradictory or weak demonstrated effects of climate variability and change on armed conflict. This article reviews the empirical literature on short-term climate/environmental change and intrastate conflict, with special attention to possible insecurity consequences of precipitation and temperature anomalies and weather-related natural disasters. Based on this assessment, it outlines priorities for future research in this area.     

Victim pressure, institutional inertia and climate change adaptation: The case of flood risk

Interviews were conducted with risk managers in a case-study area in England to determine the factors influencing the choice between more traditional, engineering based, adaptation to flood risk and those focussing on vulnerability reduction. The findings of in-depth analysis of these interviews have implications for climate change adaptation as a whole. They suggest that government policies to implement a broader range of adaptation measures might be hampered by institutional cultures formed when structural, engineered approaches were the norm. Political decentralisation and the fashion for public consultation exacerbate this effect, leaving decision-makers more responsive to the influence of those directly affected by natural hazards than they are to the needs of the wider population or to policy pronouncements by government.     

Social and structural vulnerabilities: Associations with disaster readiness

The ability to plan for a disaster is associated with a range of contextual factors and often traverses several sites of inequities, including sociodemographic and institutional disparities. While multiple studies have investigated the relationship of housing insecurity with adverse outcomes after a disaster, fewer studies have examined how housing insecurity is associated with disaster preparedness. This paper hypothesizes social and structural vulnerabilities to be directly associated with preparedness. Housing insecurity is posited to have both direct and multiplicative effects with social vulnerability on the dependent variable. We use nationally representative data from the 2017 American Housing Survey. The final weighted study sample consisted of 29,070 housing units, with 52% male and 48% female householders. Fifty-seven percent of the population was not prepared with food, water, emergency funds, and transportation. Housing security and quality emerged as important conditions for households to be better prepared. Further, housing insecurity moderated the relationship between some social vulnerability factors and preparedness. The study helps identify where resources and research funds should be targeted to reduce multidimensional vulnerabilities before a disaster. Safe and affordable housing is central to climate and environmental justice; centering disaster readiness, response, and climate action across policy agendas is vital.     

The surface of vulnerability: An analytical framework for examining environmental change

This paper introduces an analytical framework for evaluating the vulnerability of people and places to environmental and social forces. The framework represents the relative vulnerability of a variable of concern (e.g. such as agricultural yield) to a set of disturbing forces (e.g. climate change, market fluctuations) by a position on a three-dimensional analytical surface, where vulnerability is defined as a function of sensitivity, exposure, and the state relative to a threshold of damage. The surface is presented as a tool to help identify relative vulnerability in order to prioritize actions and assess the vulnerability implications of management and policy decisions.     

Challenges and opportunities for re-framing resource use policy with practice theories: The change points approach

Concerns about the climate crisis and the escalating pace of global consumption are accelerating the pressure on governments to moderate public demand for resources like water, food and energy. Notwithstanding their increasing sophistication, standard behavioural change approaches continue to be criticised for a narrow understanding of what shapes behaviour. One alternative theoretical position comes from practice theories, which draw on interpretive and relational understandings to focus on practices rather than people's behaviour, and hence highlight the complex and distributed set of factors shaping resource use. While practice theories have gained considerable interest from policy institutions within and beyond the UK they so far have had limited impact upon policy. It has even been argued that there are insurmountable challenges in reconciling the ontological commitments of practice theories with the realities of policy processes. This article advances academic and policy debates about the practical implications of practice theories. It works with evidence from transdisciplinary research intended to establish whether and how key distinctive insights from social practice research can usefully be brought to bear on policy. We pursued this through co-productive research with four key UK national policy partners, focusing on effective communication of social practice research evidence on agreed issues. A key outcome of collaboratively negotiating challenging social theory to usefully influence policy processes is the ‘Change Points’ approach, which our partners identified as offering new thinking on initiatives promoting reductions in people's use and disposal of resources. The Change Points approach was developed to enable policy processes to confront the complexities of everyday action, transforming both how problems are framed and how practical initiatives for effecting change are developed. We discuss the case of food waste reduction in order to demonstrate the potential of Change Points to reframe behaviour change policy. We end the paper by addressing the potential and limitations of informing policy with insights from practice theories based upon the successes as well as the challenges we have met. This discussion has broader implications beyond practice theories to other fields of social theory, and to debates on the relations between academic research and policy more broadly. We argue that, through a co-productive approach with policy professionals, and so engagement with the practices of policy making, it is possible to provide a partial and pragmatic but nevertheless effective translation of key distinctive insights from practice theories and related research, to reframe policy problems and hence to identify spaces for effecting change for sustainability.     

Vulnerability and adaptation of African rural populations to hydro-climate change: experience from fishing communities in the Inner Niger Delta (Mali)

In this paper we examine ways Sahelian floodplain fishers have adapted to the strong environmental variations that have affected the region in the last two decades. We analyse their vulnerability and adaptive capacity in the face of expected changes in rainfall combined with the predicted effects of dam construction. Data from the Inner Niger Delta in Mali were used to show that fishers were highly sensitive to past and recent variations in the hydro-climatic conditions. Moreover, it appears their traditional livelihood strategies, although diversified, sophisticated and well suited to historical conditions, offer a limited set of options to adapt to increased environmental constraints. For fish-dependent households that have adopted a mixed set of activities through farming, the high seasonality and constraints characterizing both their main activities (fishing and farming) does not allow switching between activities. For those households that undertake seasonal fishing migrations, there is little opportunity to modify migration routes or find new settlements sites inside the delta because of the high population density in this area. In sum, although the adoption of diversified and spatially discrete patterns in livelihood activities is often presented as a strategy to reduce vulnerability, such a strategy does not appear sufficient to allow fishers of the delta to successfully face the increasing constraints associated with the changes in hydro-climatic conditions. In such a context, fishing communities will be driven towards more drastic strategies of adaptation and/or coping such as switching to new activities based on agricultural innovations or emigration from the delta. Both strategies present many hazards, particularly in the absence of supportive public policy.     

Climate change policy responses for Canada's Inuit population: The importance of and opportunities for adaptation

We identify and examine how policy intervention can help Canada's Inuit population adapt to climate change. The policy responses are based on an understanding of the determinants of vulnerability identified in research conducted with 15 Inuit communities. A consistent approach was used in each case study where vulnerability is conceptualized as a function of exposure-sensitivity to climatic risks and adaptive capacity to deal with those risks. This conceptualization focuses on the biophysical and human determinants of vulnerability and how they are influenced by processes and conditions operating at multiple spatial-temporal scales. Case studies involved close collaboration with community members and policy makers to identify conditions to which each community is currently vulnerable, characterize the factors that shape vulnerability and how they have changed over time, identify opportunities for adaptation policy, and examine how adaptation can be mainstreamed. Fieldwork, conducted between 2006 and 2009, included 443 semi-structured interviews, 20 focus groups/community workshops, and 65 interviews with policy makers at local, regional, and national levels. Synthesizing findings consistent across the case studies we document significant vulnerabilities, a function of socio-economic stresses and change, continuing and pervasive inequality, and magnitude of climate change. Nevertheless, adaptations are available, feasible, and Inuit have considerable adaptive capacity. Realizing this adaptive capacity and overcoming adaptation barriers requires policy intervention to: (i) support the teaching and transmission of environmental knowledge and land skills, (ii) enhance and review emergency management capability, (iii) ensure the flexibility of resource management regimes, (iv) provide economic support to facilitate adaptation for groups with limited household income, (v) increase research effort to identify short and long term risk factors and adaptive response options, (vi) protect key infrastructure, and (vii) promote awareness of climate change impacts and adaptation among policy makers.     

Changing mechanism of global water scarcity events: Impacts of socioeconomic changes and inter-annual hydro-climatic variability

Changes in available fresh water resources, together with changes in water use, force our society to adapt continuously to water scarcity conditions. Although several studies assess the role of long-term climate change and socioeconomic developments on global water scarcity, the impact of inter-annual climate variability is less understood and often neglected. This paper presents a global scale water scarcity assessment that accounts for both temporal changes in socioeconomic conditions and hydro-climatic variability over the period 1960–2000. We thereby visualized for the first time possible over- and underestimations that may have been made in previous water scarcity assessments due to the use long-term means in their analyses. Subsequently, we quantified the relative contribution of hydro-climatic variability and socioeconomic developments on changing water scarcity conditions. We found that hydro-climatic variability and socioeconomic changes interact and that they can strengthen or attenuate each other, both regionally and at the global scale. In general, hydro-climatic variability can be held responsible for the largest share (>79%) of the yearly changes in global water scarcity, whilst only after six to ten years, socioeconomic developments become the largest driver of change. Moreover, our results showed that the growth in the relative contribution of socioeconomic developments to changing water scarcity conditions stabilizes towards 2000 and that the impacts of hydro-climatic variability remain significantly important. The findings presented in this paper could be of use for water managers and policy makers coping with water scarcity issues since correct information both on the current situation and regarding the relative contribution of different mechanisms shaping future conditions is key to successful adaptation and risk reduction.     

Identifying hot spots of security vulnerability associated with climate change in Africa

Given its high dependence on rainfed agriculture and its comparatively low adaptive capacity, Africa is frequently invoked as especially vulnerable to climate change. Within Africa, there is likely to be considerable variation in vulnerability to climate change both between and within countries. This paper seeks to advance the agenda of identifying the hot spots of what we term “climate security” vulnerability, areas where the confluence of vulnerabilities could put large numbers of people at risk of death from climate-related hazards. This article blends the expertise of social scientists and climate scientists. It builds on a model of composite vulnerability that incorporates four “baskets” or processes that are thought to contribute to vulnerability including: (1) physical exposure, (2) population density, (3) household and community resilience, and (4) governance and political violence. Whereas previous iterations of the model relied on historical physical exposure data of natural hazards, this paper uses results from regional model simulations of African climate in the late 20th century and mid-21st century to develop measures of extreme weather events—dry days, heat wave events, and heavy rainfall days—coupled with an indicator of low-lying coastal elevation. For the late 20th century, this mapping process reveals the most vulnerable areas are concentrated in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan, with pockets in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mauritania, and Sierra Leone. The mid 21st century projection shows more extensive vulnerability throughout the Sahel, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, northern Nigeria, Niger, and across Sudan.     

The long history of environmental migration: Assessing vulnerability construction and obstacles to successful relocation in Shishmaref,Alaska

Migration decisions are complex and are linked to multiple vulnerabilities, including changing ecological conditions precipitated by climate change. As ecological thresholds are met, community-wide migrations will become more common. These community-wide migrations are more likely to occur to already vulnerable populations, and may levy high social costs. In order to prevent the negative outcomes associated with forced migration and diaspora, policy intervention is likely. Our research examines the case study of Shishmaref, Alaska, where relocation as an adaptation strategy to changing ecological conditions is the only sustainable option. We find that the colonial history in Shishmaref is explicitly linked to contemporary exposure to hazards and increased vulnerability. We further assess obstacles to a State sponsored relocation. These obstacles include disaster response protocol that does not adequately accommodate climate change scenarios. Relocation planning is further complicated by feelings of mis- and under-representation of local voices in political arenas. This case demonstrates the interrelatedness between historically constructed vulnerability and obstacles to adaptation planning. We also offer unique insight into the details of relocation planning as an adaptation strategy among one of the first community-wide migrations associated with climate change.     

Emergence of co-management governance for Hawai‘i coral reef fisheries

Governance failures associated with top-down management have spawned a myriad of institutional arrangements to engage resource users in decision-making through co-management. Although co-management can take many forms and may not always lead to positive outcomes, it has emerged as a promising governance option available to meet social and ecological goals. Recent research on co-management of small-scale fisheries has used comparative approaches to test factors associated with social and ecological success. Less is known however, about how co-management institutional arrangements emerge and persist in the face of socioeconomic and environmental change. Here, we examine the emergence of co-management governance using a case study from coral reef fisheries in the Hawaiian Islands. We used a mixed methods approach, combining a robust policy analysis and a set of key respondent interviews to trace the evolution of this co-management arrangement. Our research uncovers a set of linked drivers and social responses, which together comprise the emergence phase for the evolution of co-management in this case study. Drivers include resource depletion and conflict, and social responses comprise self-organization, consensus building, and collective action. We share insights on key factors that affect these phases of emergence, drawing on empirical findings from our policy review and key respondent interviews. We conclude by describing ways that our findings can directly inform policy and planning in practice, including the importance of documenting the ‘creation story’ that spawned the new institutional arrangement, ensuring that enabling conditions are present, the complexity of defining community, the connection between process legitimacy and outcomes, and understanding the costs and timelines associated with co-management governance transitions.     

Theory and Practice in Assessing Vulnerability to Climate Change andFacilitating Adaptation

We discuss approaches to the assessment of vulnerability to climatevariability and change andattempt to clarify the relationship between the concepts of vulnerability andadaptation. In searchof a robust, policy-relevant framework, we define vulnerability in terms ofthe capacity ofindividuals and social groups to respond to, that is, to cope with, recoverfrom or adapt to, anyexternal stress placed on their livelihoods and well-being. The approach thatwe develop placesthe social and economic well-being of society at the centre of the analysis,focussing on thesocio-economic and institutional constraints that limit the capacity torespond. From thisperspective, the vulnerability or security of any group is determined byresource availability andby the entitlement of individuals and groups to call on these resources. Weillustrate theapplication of this approach through the results of field research in coastalVietnam, highlightingshifting patterns of vulnerability to tropical storm impacts at the household-and community-levelin response to the current process of economic renovation and drawingconclusions concerningmeans of supporting the adaptive response to climate stress. Four prioritiesfor action areidentified that would improve the situation of the most exposed members ofmany communities:poverty reduction; risk-spreading through income diversification; respectingcommon propertymanagement rights; and promoting collective security. A sustainable response,we argue, mustalso address the underlying causes of social vulnerability, including theinequitable distributionof resources.     

Vulnerability

This paper reviews research traditions of vulnerability to environmental change and the challenges for present vulnerability research in integrating with the domains of resilience and adaptation. Vulnerability is the state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the absence of capacity to adapt. Antecedent traditions include theories of vulnerability as entitlement failure and theories of hazard. Each of these areas has contributed to present formulations of vulnerability to environmental change as a characteristic of social-ecological systems linked to resilience. Research on vulnerability to the impacts of climate change spans all the antecedent and successor traditions. The challenges for vulnerability research are to develop robust and credible measures, to incorporate diverse methods that include perceptions of risk and vulnerability, and to incorporate governance research on the mechanisms that mediate vulnerability and promote adaptive action and resilience. These challenges are common to the domains of vulnerability, adaptation and resilience and form common ground for consilience and integration.     

Vulnerable or Resilient? A Multi-Scale Assessment of Climate Impacts and Vulnerability in Norway

This paper explores the issue of climate vulnerability in Norway, an affluent country that is generally considered to be resilient to the impacts of climate change. In presenting a multi-scale assessment of climate change impacts and vulnerability in Norway, we show that the concept of vulnerability depends on the scale of analysis. Both exposure and the distribution of climate sensitive sectors vary greatly across scale. So do the underlying social and economic conditions that influence adaptive capacity. These findings question the common notion that climate change may be beneficial for Norway, and that the country can readily adapt to climate change. As scale differences are brought into consideration, vulnerability emerges within some regions, localities, and social groups. To cope with actual and potential changes in climate and climate variability, it will be necessary to acknowledge climate vulnerabilities at the regional and local levels, and to address them accordingly. This multi-scale assessment of impacts and vulnerability in Norway reinforces the importance of scale in global change research.     

Assessing future vulnerability and risk of humanitarian crises using climate change and population projections within the INFORM framework

INFORM Risk Index is a global indicator-based disaster risk assessment tool that combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping capacity indicators with the purpose to support humanitarian crisis management decisions considering the current climate and population. In this exploratory study, we extend the Index to include future climate change and population projections using RCP 8.5 climate projections of coastal flood, river flood and drought, and SSP3 and SSP5 population projections for the period 2036 to 2065. For the three hazards considered, annually 1.3 billion people (150% increase), 1.8 billion people (249% increase) and 1.5 billion people (197% increase) in the mid-21st century are projected to be exposed under the 2015, SSP3 and SSP5 population estimates, respectively. Drought shows the highest exposure levels followed by river flood and then coastal flood, with some regional differences. The largest exposed population is projected in Asia, while the largest percent changes are projected in Africa and Oceania. Countries with largest current and projected risk including non-climatic factors are generally located in Africa, West and South Asia and Central America. An uncertainty analysis of the extended index shows that it is generally robust and not influenced by the methodological choices. The projected changes in risk and coping capacity (vulnerability) due to climate change are generally greater than those associated with population changes. Countries in Europe, Western and Northern Asia and Africa tend to show higher reduction levels in vulnerability (lack of coping capacity) required to nullify the adverse impacts of the projected amplified hazards and exposure. The required increase in coping capacity (decreased vulnerability) can inform decision-making processes on disaster risk reduction and adaptation options to maintain manageable risk levels at global and national scale. Overall, the extended INFORM Risk Index is a means to integrate Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation policy agendas to create conditions for greater policy impact, more efficient use of resources and more effective action in protecting life, livelihoods and valuable assets.