The concept of vulnerability has become an important part of food security analyses since the 1980s. It is seen as having two sides: exposure to external hazards; and an inability to cope with those shocks, attributed to social, political, and economic factors. Numerous attempts have been made to construct models to determine levels of vulnerability among populations. This paper analyses one such attempt, the Chronic Vulnerability Index (CVI), developed to measure levels of vulnerability to food insecurity in Ethiopia. The example of the CVI reveals many of the difficulties associated with producing a basic model of vulnerability that can be used in disaster mitigation. Ultimately, the CVI assumes that vulnerability is a linear, additive phenomenon with discrete causes and effects and fails to capture interactions between hazards and the human systems that produce and complicate them. The paper concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the CVI.

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