An integrated framework for assessing coastal community vulnerability across cultures, oceans and scales

Abstract

Coastal communities are some of the most at-risk populations with respect to climate change impacts. It is therefore important to determine the vulnerability of such communities to co-develop viable adaptation options. Global efforts to address this issue include international scientific projects, such as Global Learning for Local Solutions (GULLS), which focuses on five fast warming regions of the southern hemisphere and aims to provide an understanding of the local scale processes influencing community vulnerability that can then be up-scaled to regional, country and global levels. This paper describes the development of a new social and ecological vulnerability framework which integrates exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity with the social livelihoods and food security approaches. It also measures community flexibility to understand better the adaptive capacity of different levels of community organization. The translation of the conceptual framework to an implementable method is described and its application in a number of "hotspot" countries, where ocean waters are warming faster than the rest of the world, is presented. Opportunities for cross-cultural comparisons to uncover similarities and differences in vulnerability and adaptation patterns among the study's coastal communities, which can provide accelerated learning mechanisms to other coastal regions, are highlighted. The social and ecological framework and the associated survey approach allow for future integration of local-level vulnerability data with ecological and oceanographic models.

Vulnerability to and perception of climate change among small-scale fishing communities from the South Brazil Bight

“…Reducing vulnerability of marine-dependent coastal communities' (GULLS) was designed to characterize, assess and predict the future of coastal-marine communities in rapidly warming marine hotspots (see HOBDAY et al, 2016). Within the project, an international group of scientists came together to define a collaborative framework of social vulnerability to climate change, and a survey instrument was developed (ASWANI et al, 2018). The goal of the framework was to collect robust, local-level, social vulnerability data that would provide a good understanding of the local-scale processes influencing community vulnerabilities while allowing for the data to be scaled up to regional, national, and global levels both to integrate with ecological and oceanographic models and to allow comparisons among hotspot countries and communities.…”

“…In the second chapter, the vulnerability of SBB fishing communities to climate change is explored. A comprehensive range of indicators have been used to provide an in-depth understanding of the sensitivity, exposure, adaptive capacity and vulnerability of the communities using the vulnerability framework developed by the GULLS project (ASWANI et al, 2018). The goal of the chapter was to identify the key factors that are driving the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the selected fishing communities.…”

“…The framework used to evaluate coastal fishing community vulnerability to climate change has been developed to address different marine-dependent coastal communities in an internationally comparative effort across Southern Hemisphere coastal zones (ASWANI et al, 2018). The framework was proposed by a multilateral scientific team aiming at improving fishing community adaptation efforts by characterizing, assessing and predicting the future of coastal-marine resources and by co-developing adaptation options through the provision and sharing of knowledge across fast-warming marine hotspot regions POPOVA et al, 2016 South Brazilian Bight Atlantic Ocean social vulnerability data to provide a detailed understanding of the local-scale processes influencing community vulnerabilities while allowing for the data to be scaled up to regional, country, and global levels.…”

“…This factor adds a new challenge, which is to make climate issues a concern to fishers, stakeholders and decision makers. The vulnerability framework used in this study was initially developed to allow across country and culture comparisons (ASWANI et al, 2018), but as the framework is based on a large database collected on at a local scale that is very detailed, the framework was highly refined for locally scaled vulnerability drivers. The criteria for selecting the communities that were designed to represent the diversity of characteristics in the region were also useful, since the criteria allow the extrapolation of the data found here to communities with similar characteristics.…”

“…and a range of social problems that are associated with these conditions (DIEGUES, 2006;GLAVOVIC;BOONZAIER, 2007). The size of the fishing communities and the proportion of households involved in fishing activities are also similar between the two countries (ASWANI et al, 2018).…”