New CARIAA working paper:
Responding to uneven vulnerabilities: A synthesis of emerging insights from climate change hotspots
Abstract:
Supporting adaptation options for the most vulnerable in climate change hotspots requires a careful consideration of issues often ignored by traditional assessments. These “blind spots” include spatial variability in the nature and level of vulnerability, the interaction and complexity factors giving rise to vulnerability, landscape connectivity, human mobility, and socially-differentiated experiences of risk and responses. Despite a multitude of approaches to vulnerability assessments and risk profiling in climate change hotspots, the key challenge has been streamlining these conceptual tools to policy and practice at the local scale where impacts are felt. This paper uses examples of water and food systems to highlight the critical importance of considering these blind spots in vulnerability assessments in climate change hotspots. Emerging research highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of multiple interacting drivers that influence socially heterogeneous communities, across various landscapes, and often in resource-constrained institutional settings.
Download the paper here.
