This paper reviews the state of knowledge on social vulnerability to climate change in three hot spots (deltas, semi-arid regions and snowpack-or glacier-fed river basins) in Africa, Central Asia and South Asia, using elements of systematic review methods. Social vulnerability is defined as a dynamic state of societies comprising exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We examine whether the hot spots have specific characteristics that tend to increase or decrease social vulnerability, consider suitable scales of analysis for understanding vulnerability, and explore the conceptions of vulnerability adopted in the climate change literature and the nature of the insights this generates. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps in this literature. All three hot spots are characterized by high levels of natural resource dependence, with increasing environmental degradation. They also exhibit unequal policies and patterns of development, which benefit certain segments of society while making others more vulnerable. Vulnerability is driven by multiple factors operating at different scales; however, characterization of cross-scalar interactions is poorly developed in the majority of studies reviewed. Most studies are either large scale, such as broad comparisons of vulnerability across countries, or local, documenting community-level processes. Detailed understanding of the interactions between climate change impacts on natural systems, and socio-economic trajectories, including adaptation, also emerges as a knowledge gap.

Current data require consolidation and could lead to the identification of biomarkers and the introduction of new modalities of treatment.

Most climate change literature tends to downplay the gendered nature of vulnerability. At best, gender is discussed in terms of the male-female binary, seen as opposing forces rather than in varying relations of interdependency. Such construction can result in the adoption of maladaptive culturally unfit gender-blind policy and interventions. In Egypt, which is highly vulnerable to climate change, gender analysis of vulnerability is almost non-existent. This paper addresses this important research gap by asking and drawing on a rural Egyptian context ‘How do the gendered relational aspects of men’s and women’s livelihoods in the household and community influence vulnerability to climate change?’. To answer this question, I draw on gender analysis of social relations, framed within an understanding of sustainable livelihoods. During 16 months of fieldwork, I used multiple ethnographic methods to collect data from two culturally and ethnically diverse low-income villages in Egypt. My main argument is that experiences of climate change are closely intertwined with gender and wider social relations in the household and community. These are shaped by local gendered ideologies and cultures that are embedded in conjugal relations, kinship and relationship to the environment, as compared across the two villages. In this paper, I strongly argue that vulnerability to climate change is highly gendered and therefore gender analysis should be at the heart of climate change discourses, policy and interventions.

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