Climate change vulnerability (or climate vulnerability or climate risk vulnerability) is a concept that describes how strongly people or ecosystems are likely to be affected by climate change. It is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans and also to natural systems (or ecosystems). Related concepts include climate sensitivity and the ability, or lack thereof, to cope and adapt. Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability differs within communities and across societies, regions, and countries, and can increase or decrease over time.
Vulnerability of people and ecosystems with regards to climate change effects is driven by certain unsustainable development patterns such as "unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, and governance". Therefore, vulnerability is higher in some locations than in others. Certain aspects within a region increase vulnerability, for example poverty, bad governance and violent conflict. Some types of livelihoods are regarded as particularly climate-sensitive, resulting in a higher level of climate change vulnerability. These include for example smallholder farmers, pastoralists and fishing communities.
Vulnerability can be grouped into two overlapping categories: These are economic vulnerability, based on socioeconomic factors, and geographic vulnerability. People who are more vulnerable than others include for example people with low incomes, indigenous peoples, women, children, the elderly.
There are several tools available to assess climate vulnerability. Because climate vulnerability disproportionally affects low-income countries, climate vulnerability has become an important tool in international negotiations about climate change adaptation, climate finance and other international policy making activities.
Definition
Climate change vulnerability is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans but also to natural systems (ecosystems), and both are interdependent. Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability will be higher if the capacity to cope and adapt is low.
Climate vulnerability can include a wide variety of different meanings, situations, and contexts in climate change research, but has been a central concept in academic research since 2005. The concept was defined in the third IPCC report in 2007 as "the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes". The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 stated that "approaches to analysing and assessing vulnerability have evolved since previous IPCC assessments".
Scale
It has been estimated in 2021 that "approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change".
The vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change is not the same everywhere: there are marked differences among and within regions. Vulnerability can also increase or decrease over time. See regions that are particularly vulnerable below.
Types
Vulnerability can be grouped into two overlapping categories: economic vulnerability, based on socioeconomic factors, and geographic vulnerability. Neither are mutually exclusive.
Economic vulnerability
At its basic level, a community that is economically vulnerable is one that is ill-prepared for the effects of climate change because it lacks the needed financial resources. Preparing a climate resilient society will require huge investments in infrastructure, city planning, engineering sustainable energy sources, and preparedness systems. From a global perspective, it is more likely that people living at or below poverty will be affected the most by climate change and are thus the most vulnerable, because they will have the least amount of resource dollars to invest in resiliency infrastructure. They will also have the least amount of resource dollars for cleanup efforts after more frequently occurring natural climate change related disasters.