Methods for vulnerability assessment
STRP12 WG1 Task 1.11 vulnerability assessment
DRAFT Guidance on methodologies for vulnerability assessment of wetlands to change in ecological character
Lead: Habiba Gitay[?]
Contributions from Max Finlayson, Randy Milton, David Stroud, David Pritchard, (Nick Davidson (Nick, Max etc to change as they see fit)
Executive summary 3
1. Introduction 5
1.1. Definition of vulnerability 5
1.1.1. Common characteristics of vulnerability 6
1.1.2. Risk assessment, risk management and vulnerability assessment 7
1.1.4. Drivers of change 8
2. Methods and approaches used in vulnerability assessment 8
2.1. Framework drawing on climate vulnerability 8
2.2. Vulnerability of wetlands to climate change 11
2.3. Framework incorporating risks to climate change into development planning 11
2.4. Ramsar’s risk assessment framework 13
3. Vulnerability assessment framework 14
4. Disaster management, adaptation and vulnerability assessment 16
5. Challenges and information gaps 17
References 18
Annex 1: Various “assessments” 19
Annex 2: Vulnerability as used in different disciplines 20
Preface
Action 1.2.4 of the Ramsar Strategic Plan 2003-2008 requested the STRP to prepare Guidance on methodologies for vulnerability assessment of wetlands to change in ecological character (including to impacts of climate change, alien species invasion and agricultural practices).
STRP’s Working Group 1 determined that the primary output of this task would be guidance on vulnerability assessment methodologies for wetlands which are available and in use, and including, as far as possible, a summary annex identifying wetland areas with early warning systems in place for monitoring wetlands, highlighting case studies where these systems have been used successfully.
The guidance on vulnerability assessment will form part of the suite of guidance supporting the Convention’s Integrated Framework for Wetland Inventory, Assessment and Monitoring, which is currently under development by STRP Working Group 1 (STRP Task 1.8).
The report on vulnerability assessment should draw upon and, as necessary elaborate and update, information provided on vulnerability assessment presented to Ramsar COP8 in COP8 DOC. 11: “Information paper: Climate change and wetlands: impacts, adaptations and mitigation”, and should complement the current guidance on risk assessment and early warning systems adopted by the Convention (Resolution VII.10 “Wetland Risk Assessment Framework”).
Through a related task (STRP Task 1.7) STRP Working Group 1 is preparing guidance on the relationships between Strategic Environmental Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment and Wetland Risk Assessment, which will also form part of the suite of guidance supporting the Convention’s Integrated Framework for Wetland Inventory, Assessment and Monitoring. The guidance on vulnerability assessment methodologies should complement the Task 1.7 guidance, and, as appropriate, should include text explaining the relationship between vulnerability assessment and risk assessment.
As an annex to the guidance on vulnerability assessment, as far as possible case studies of the application of vulnerability assessment and early warning systems to wetlands, including case studies concerning climate change and alien invasive species, should be identified.
Review and input to aspects of the report relating to vulnerability assessment in relation to agricultural practices will be made by the STRP’s cross-cutting working group on agriculture and wetlands.
Executive summary
Vulnerability as a term has been widely used. It refers to the relationship between exposure to a particular risk event, the impact of that event on a system and the ability of the system to cope with the impacts or the efforts needed to minimise the impacts. It has been used in various disciplines, e.g. in the context of poverty and poverty alleviation and more recently for the effects of climate change on human systems and ecosystems. The idea of the resiliency and sensitivity of the system are often included as part of vulnerability, especially in the context of climate change.
In 1990s, methods were developed to assess the vulnerability of wetlands to climate change, especially sea level rise and changes in extreme climatic events, such as floods and droughts. These methods included a series of steps that identified: i)the system (e.g. coastal wetlands and the human populations that depended on them); ii) its present condition; iii) the potential changes over 50-100 year time frame in climatic variables at regional scale through the use of downscaled global circulation models (GCMs); iv) the impacts of these projected changes on the system; and v)and the potential management (or adaptation) options. In much of this work, the concept of risk identification and risk management – thus by reducing the risk, the system would become less vulnerable - was included. Vulnerability assessment often resulted in maps or lists of wetlands vulnerable to climate change.
Although it has been useful to develop methods that concentrate on the vulnerability of a wetland to climate change, in reality climate change is an added pressure on many wetlands. Vulnerability of a wetland is thus its ability to cope with any impacts from externally driven forces. Bringing together various methods and approaches, a general approach or framework for wetland vulnerability assessment is developed in this paper. The framework has the following elements:
1. Identification of the system (biophysical and social), the present and recent pressures that exist on that system, the present condition of the system. (Dueto data limitation, some of this information can include local/expert knowledge).
2. Determination of the sensitivity and resiliency of the system to the present changes
3. The plausible changes that could occur in multiple pressures on the system
4. The likely impact of these changes on the system
5. The responses that need to be developed and implemented, given the sensitivity and resiliency of the system.
6. The desired outcomes for the system.
7. Monitoring and adaptive management during implementation to ensure the path to the desired outcomes
Risk assessment methods would genrally incorporate steps 1-4 and risk management mainly steps 5-7. However, there has been little or no emphasis placed on defining the desired outcomes.
The approach developed here goes further than producing maps of vulnerable areas, emphasizing the need for developing and implementing responses that would help reduce the vulnerability of the system given the degraded status of many wetlands of the world. It also incorporates the wise use concept and builds on Ramsar’s risk assessment framework.
There are still many challenges that remain and will have to be addressed:
• The lack of spatial and temporal data, at appropriate scales, as a time series to determine the present condition and trends in that condition of a wetland, its natural dynamics, the sensitivity to past and present pressures and potential thresholds, inertia or lag effects. These are all components of ecological character.
• of the complexity of the multiple and interactivepressures that often affect wetlands (e.g. land use land cover change, climate change etc)
• Developing a metric that would measure the vulnerability of the wetland to the multiple pressures and ;
1. Introduction
Vulnerability as a term has been used in various disciplines, for example in social sciences when referring to poverty, in human health when referring to disease outbreaks, and in environmental sciences when referring to climate change (Alwang et al 2001). It refers to the relationship between a particular event having an impact on a system, the risk associated with that impact, and the efforts to manage that risk.
The term “assessment” is used in various ways with an agreed definition accepted by the Ramsar Convention in 2002 (Resolution VIII.7, 2002 - key_res_vii.7.doc; Finlayson et al. 1999): Wetland Assessment: the identification of the status of, and threats to, wetlands as a basis for the collection of more specific information through monitoring activities.
The accepted definition thus places assessment within the context of the related concepts of inventory and monitoring as outlined in the model for integrated wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring ( see “An integrated framework for wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring – IFWIAM” by Finlayson et al. 2005). The Convention has dealt with a a range of technical assessments and include: risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment as well as vulnerability assessment and are presented in the IFWIAM.
Vulnerability to climate change has been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the early 1990s. Various frameworks that incorporate vulnerability have been devised over the last 15 years. Amongst the first developed was one for coastal zones by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC’s CZMS 1990), and it is still the basis of many vulnerability assessment frameworks. Work done by the Stockholm Environmental Institute (see Downing and Doherty 2004), Ramsar (van Dam et al. 1999) builds on this, the latter particularly explores vulnerability approaches that can be useful for wetlands. This paper first deals with what is meant by vulnerability and then brings together various approaches used for vulnerability assessment and proposes a way forward in responding to the vulnerabilities of wetlands.
1.1. Definition of vulnerability
There is no single definition of vulnerability. The work of the IPCC (IPCC 2001) and the review done by Alwang et al. (2001) is used as a basis to propose a definition, and outline the characteristics of vulnerability that need to be considered in wetland vulnerability assessment. Taking a climate change impact perspective, the IPCC (2001) considered the vulnerability of any system to have two major components: i) sensitivity of the system; and ii) its adaptive capacity. These terms are defined below:
• Sensitivity is the degree to which a system is affected, either adversely or beneficially, by climate-related stimuli. Climate-related stimuli include the elements of climate change: mean climate characteristics, climate variability, and the frequency and magnitude of extremes.
• Adaptive capacity - ability of a system to adjust to climate change and climate variability; to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.
Wetlands, as many ecosystems, are affected by many pressures due to human activity. So generalizing from the IPCC definition,
Vulnerability is the degree to which a wetland is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, variability and other pressures.
Vulnerability is determined at specific spatial and temporal scales and is a dynamic property that changes depending on the local conditions, e.g. a system may be vulnerable at a particular time (e.g. the dry season), but may not at other times.
Systems are considered to be highly vulnerable if they have low inherent capacity to cope with the change (or are not resilient) and/or there are few or no options to reduce impacts of pressures and/or they are naturally sensitive to pressures,for example due to their geographic or socio-political location. On the other hand, systems have low vulnerability and thus high adaptive capacity if there are institutional and financial capacity to develop and implement options to reduce the impact of pressures (often referred to as coping capacity) or are inherently resilient. Vulnerability is thus linked to the “stability” or resiliency that is comprised of the sensitivity of a system (see table 1) and its coping capacity, as well as the exposure to a hazard (see table 2). Climatic hazards are often associated with extreme climatic events, e.g. floods, droughts, heat waves. Exposure includesthe spatial and temporal extent of the system being affected.
Table 1: Relationship between sensitivity, resilency and vulnerability of the system
| |Resiliency/adaptive capacity |
| |High |Low |
|Sensitivity | | |
|High |Vulnerable |Very vulnerable |
|Low |Not vulnerable |Vulnerable |
Modified from Alwang et al., 2001; IPCC 2001
Wetlands are inherently dynamic systems often with large inherent fluctuations/ranges and often with multiple stable states (e.g. flooded to dry) and meta-states that can often switch for unknown reasons. Given this, it is particularly difficult to determine when they are likely to become vulnerable or highly vulnerable to a single or multiple pressures. It is also clear that some wetlands have gone through irreversible changes and thus passed thresholds. These changes can be associated with multiple large-scale changes in land use and land cover (either in the wetland itself, e.g. through draining, or changes in the surrounding land areas) or through multiple extreme climatic events and/or other natural events (e.g. volcanic eruptions) (we can ref MA chapters here, incl that on natural disasters).
Table 2: Hazard, exposure, capacity to cope and vulnerability
| | |Adaptive or coping capacity |
| | |High |low |
|Hazard |High |low vulnerability |high vulnerability |
|Exposure |Low |Very low vulnerability |low vulnerability |
Source: Sharma et al. 2000
1.1.1. Common characteristics of vulnerability
Generalising from the extensive literature Alwang et al (2001) reviewed, the following common characteristics can be applied to the concept of vulnerability:
a) it is forward-looking and is the probability of a change in the condition of a system in the future relative to some benchmark (or baseline);
b) the change is caused by some hazard;
c) it depends on the time horizon (i.e. can change depending on whether vulnerability is considered on a seasonal, annual or decadal basis);
d) the present condition of the system, its resiliency and sensitivity..
These characteristics are also part of risk assessment and risk management frameworks and are explored in the next section.
1.1.2. Risk assessment, risk management and vulnerability assessment
Vulnerability is closely associated with risk assessment and risk management (Alwang et al. 2001). A system can be exposed to a risky event (e.g. droughts) that varies in intensity and frequency. Risk assessment is based on determining the extent of a particular hazard and its potential effect or impact on the system and may be expressed qualitatively (insert the risk assessment marix?). or quantitatively as a probability (need to check Burgman book) Risk management involves taking actions (management options) to reduce the impact of the event and lead to some desired outcome over a specified time period.
Risk management is often a construct that is generally applied to human health, infrastruture etc. There has been some work on ecological or environmental risk assessment (e.g. the risk of a species becoming extinct) and mangement which also incorporates the idea of risk characterization, risk management (Finlayson 2002, Walden et al. 2004), and as a step towards “outcome”, monitoring. Refer Burgman book – HG will do
Given the characteristics of vulnerability, vulnerability assessment can be seen to have four components: the hazard as the probability of an event occurring, the risk: the likelihood of that event leading to adverse change, the response needed to manage that change (response), and a formulation of desired outcome. Given the wide use of the term vulnerability, it is useful to look at the different emphasis placed by different disciplines (see table 3 and Annex 2). In some cases, methods, especially from the climate change perspective, have concentrated on responses to climatic extremes or hazards, however, this is not sufficient as systems can be at risk to slow or chronic changes rather than a particular single event.
Table 3: How different components of vulnerability (risk, response and outcomes) are treated in different disciplines.
|Treatment by different disciplines|Risk |Response |Outcome |
|Sociology & anthropology |Implicit. Usually focus on single |Often a key focus of this |Main focus: outcomes other than |
| |source of risk |literature: how social and other |“income” poverty |
| | |assets | |
|Poverty alleviation |Implicit |Implicit: response clearly |Main focus: probability of being |
| | |determines outcome but specific |poor; transitions in and out of |
| | |response mechanisms are rarely |poverty |
| | |identified | |
|Asset-based Approaches |Mostly implicit Sometimes includes|Main focus: but often does not |Not often explicit Sometimes use |
| |value of assets at risk |describe specific mechanisms |variability in outcomes as |
| | | |motivation |
|Sustainable Livelihoods |Sometimes explicit: concept of |Mostly explicit: concept of |Literature recognizes that |
| |sensitivity is related to exposure|resilience is related to response.|vulnerability is an ongoing and |
| |to risky events |Key focus of this literature is |forward-looking process |
| | |household response mechanisms | |
|Food Security |Sometimes explicit: e.g., poor |Sometimes explicit |Main focus: probability of not |
| |rainfall, price changes. Focus on | |meeting food needs; consequences |
| |single source of risk | |of inadequate food intake |
|Environmental management |Usually explicit; identify risks |Implicit: species and ecosystems |Explicit focus: species survival, |
| |and thresholds |can respond, but mechanism of |decreased habitat loss, etc. Tends|
| | |response is not made explicit. |to be long term and forward |
| | |Can incorporate autonomous |looking (e.g., sustainability) |
| | |adaptation or adaptive capacity | |
|Disaster Management |Explicit. Focus on single source |Sometimes explicit, not well |Explicit, but not always well |
|See section **** |risk (ex poste) |delineated |delineated. |
Modified from Alwang et al. (2001)
A risk can be due to a particular pressure or multiple pressures. For example in wetlands, the risk could be due to drainage, adjoining land use and land cover change and changes in climate variability all of which affect the hydrology of a wetland (MA 2005 chapts). As stated in various studies (e.g. Bayliss et al. 1997, IPCC 2002 and references therein), it is important to consider these multiple pressures when developing any management reponse – a crtitical step in vulnerability assessment.
1.1.4. Drivers of change
Human activities often referred to as pressures or direct drivers of change, affect wetland functioning in many ways, both directly and indirectly. These pressures affect the ecological character of wetlands, specifically through changes in hydrology.
At the global level, human activities have caused, and will continue to cause, a loss and/or degradation of wetlands through climate change, land-use and land-cover change, including drainage, urbanisation and changes in flow regime; water pollution (through land and/or air); water abstraction and diversion of water to intensively managed ecosystems and urban systems; habitat fragmentation; selective exploitation of species; introduction of non-native and/or invasive species; and stratospheric ozone depletion. (IPCC 2002, Watson and Berghall 2003, MA 2005). The underlying causes driving these changes (indirect drivers of change – MA 2003) include economic, demographic socio-political, scientific and technical factors. The drivers of change interact with each other, e.g. climate change and climate variability can lead to increased frequency and intensity of floods and drought, which in turn can affect surface and ground water flow, which in turn can affect the establishment or dispersal of invasive species. It is thus important to consider the linkages between these drivers when analysing the impacts and subsequently developing management responses for wetlands.
2. Methods and approaches used in vulnerability assessment
Various approaches, with overlapping components have been used in vulnerability assessment. Three methods are summarised here, and then based on these, a framework for vulnerability assessment of wetlands is suggested.
2.1. Framework drawing on climate vulnerability
Downing and Doherty (2004), drawing together many approaches used for climate vulnerability and adaptation, have suggested a vulnerability assessment framework. The steps and methods suggested can be modified to include ecosystems such as wetlands and ecological character of wetlands. They emphasise the approach should be seen to be a process and although they do not explicitly incorporate monitoring and adaptive mangement, these can be seen to be part of the process. Their framework is conceptual in many ways, centred on stakeholder engagement, extrapolation of the present risks and pressures and incorporates role playing and visualisation exercises. It can be seen to be an awareness raising exercise but also supports empowerment to be able to deal with the present climate variability and to develop responses for the projected changes. Their framework and the associated methods, can be summarised as follows (see also figure 1):
• Examination of the present ecological and social system. The methods concentrate on the knowledge from stakeholders.
• Stakeholder analysis and engagement This can include an inventory of stakeholders, analysis of their organisational capacity (e.g., focus, legal structure, resources) and a mapping of stakeholder that form the basis of social institutions.
• Understanding current vulnerability to multiple stresses. This can be done using a series of matrices to show the relative vulnerability of different groups and activities to climatic hazards (e.g., droughts, floods, extremely high temperature events). In this matrix, the columns can be the present climatic threats (or opportunities) and trends that are important for the vulnerable components of the system (specific ecological characters). Other pressures can be added. The matrix can be filled in with relative scores (say from 1 to 5) for the degree to which each climatic hazard can affects each ecological component or livelihood.
• Evaluating narratives (scenarios) of future vulnerability. Understanding future vulnerability requires an extension of the current vulnerability methods with some sort of scenario analysis. They can include backcasting or time-dependent projections, Note: this has limitations, as the system behaviour may not remain the same in the future. Stakeholders can categorise the risks to particular components (e.g. of ecological character or their livelihood).
• Identifying and evaluating potential adaptive strategies and measures. The analysis can include financial, technical capacities, data requirements, time required to plan and implement the options, stakeholder commitment and involvement that would be needed and over what time period, who/what would be losers and who/what the beneficiaries and thus the potential conflicts that would need to be managed. Techniques to evaluate adaptation options range from qualitative checklists to full cost-benefit analysis. In most cases, some sort of multi-criteria analysis is essential.
• Communication and integrations: Would include testing potential responses and policy options. Rule based and multi-agent modelling and/or formal models of environmental stresses, the responses of individual actors and social networks can provide a means to test a wide range of scenarios. Simple rule based approaches can be readily implemented, for instance in the Java Expert Systems Shell. Role playing is one form of an interactive policy exercise. Role playing and policy exercises can provide Insight into the dynamics and processes driving future vulnerability and the implementation of adaptive options can be gleaned from stakeholder-driven exercises. For instance, a drought crisis could be ‘played’ for the present and then for a future scenario, perhaps with greater economic trade and an early warning system.
Figure 3: Some suggsted core methods for vulnarability suggsted by Downing & Doherty (2004)
|Step: |
| |
| |
| |
|Elements (dimensions) of a risk analysis | |Trends and transformations underway that shape vulnerable groups and stakeholders | |Target vulnerable groups and risks
Scales of risk
Narratives, case histories, self reporting
News stories, photography, video | |Same as for current vulnerability, with:
Projections, backcasting, visions of future conditions | |Identify high priority responses | |Press release and news stories
Video
CD and decision support | |
2.2. Vulnerability of wetlands to climate change
Bayliss et al (1999), as part of developing guidance for vulnerability assessment, developed a framework that specifically considered vulnerability to climate change in wetlands. They used the framework for a large river system in northern Australia, the Alligator Rivers. Their steps included:
• Delineation of affected areas: All wetlands in the region below 4 m in elevation. No separation into different types (eg mangroves, saltflats and freshwater floodplains, lowland monsoonal forests), but treated as interconnected habitats. Major rivers and creeks were identified from maps and remote imagery. The wetlands within the region are part of a broader biophysical region. The vulnerability of these habitats to climate change was not assessed in isolation of other impacts and/or threats that were changing, or could change, the ecological character of the wetlands.
• Stakeholders identification: those holding or having access to the information (e.g. ERISS, National Parks, mining company) or were major land holders. Local community interests, particularly landholders adjacent to the park and representatives of Aboriginal peoples were involved
• Responses developed: Suggested an integrated coastal zone management plan given that the wetlands within the region are part of a broader biophysical region. Thus, responses to change, including sea level rise, must be addressed by policies at the catchment and coastal zone level and not in isolation of adjacent jurisdictions or communities. Local associations, and all spheres of government, should be encouraged to participate actively in the planning, implementation and appraisal of management activities. Management policies that can respond to change are required and should pro-actively address the major or prime change scenario. Vulnerability assessment should be integrated into the management processes for the coastal wetlands.
• Information gaps identified: For the long-term application of vulnerability assessment, more precise information on areas likely to be impacted is required. Delineation at a more detailed scale would be useful, but only if complemented with more accurate meteorological and hydrological information, including tidal records and water movements in the adjacent seas. Ecological information is very site specific and thus limited in space and time and generally do not include information on ecological processes. The absence of a time series of reference data hinders the vulnerability assessment. The ecological character of the region is partially described, but data upon which changes to this character can be identified are, at the best, cursory. The ecological character of the wetlands has undergone major change and is changing further, but the extent of change has not been widely determined.
As stated above, this was amongst the early work on climate change vulnerability assessment and identified some issues that need to be addressed: issues of hazard and risk, governance, strategic planning, acquisition and custodianship of information and further research and monitoring. They also concluded that the human perceptions of risk, natural, cultural and socio-economic values. The latter are analogous to the ideas of ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2003) and have to be incorporated in the management plans. In addition, they recognised the need to raise public awareness for the responses to be implemented at multiple layers, e.g. community, regional and national (Eliot et al. 1999).
2.3. Framework incorporating risks to climate change into development planning
Accepting the importance of climate change,the need for it to be incorporated into development agenda and the limited climate change expertise, the World Bank and other bilateral donor agencies have developed screening tool to help incorporate the risks climate change poses to development projects and a guide to minimising those risks. The World Bank’s screening tool (ADAPT) brings together climate data-bases and expert assessment of the threats and opportunities arising from climate variability and change. It provides a summary of the climate trends from GCM projections[?] at a project site; identifies components of the project that might be subject to climate risk; explains the nature of the risk, and provides guidance to appropriate resources (knowledge documents and experts to help follow up on any identified risks). Essentially, the tool mimics an initial consultation with a climate change expert. The tool is intended for project team members who have limited knowledge of climate change.
The screening tool consists of the following elements:
1. A climate data-base with global coverage of nine key climate variables and projected changes over the 21st century. Currently data provided by the Japanese Meteorological Association from their Earth Simulator project is used for global coverage. This is the highest resolution model (20x20 km) of its kind and provides the best available projections of extreme events. Data from other regional downscaled models is being added.
2. A simple expert system that takes the user through a series of questions about their project, including the location. The location specific information allows the system to tailor the climatic classification based on the commonly used Holdridge’s classification and the likely impacts. It then identifies a series of topic ‘activities’ within the project that may be sensitive to climate change. At present, Agriculture and Biodiversity type of projects are included in the expert system.
3. A decision engine that matches the activities with the climate for the location of the project and calculates an assessment of the risks relating to climate change for that activity. The assessment is qualitative in that the risks and opportunities are coded by five colored flags representing different types of risk/opportunities.
4. A report generator that delivers to the user the results of the analyses on screen or in printed form.
5. A document data base and linking data that selects the most relevant documents to the user based on the activities identified to be at risk and offers these to the user.
It would be possible to incorporate the various other pressures as part of the knowledge base. This is important especially when developing projects, no matter how they are funded and can form part of an Environmental Impact assessment (see section ****).
With the growing attention to climate change, other organisation have also started developing screening tools. Summary file to be inserted here
Can’t delete this so will have to do so.
2.4. Ramsar’s risk assessment framework
The Convention on Wetlands in 1999 developed a conceptual framework for wetland risk assessment, which provided guidance on predicting and assessing change in the ecological character of wetlands and the usefulness of early warning systems. The risk assessment framework was promoted as part of an integrated management planning process for wetlands.
Drawing together the work of Ramsar (1999), Bayliss et al (1997), Finlayson et al. (2002), Walden et al (2004) a risk assessment framework also has a series of steps and again is a process:. The steps (which can be iterative) can be summarised as follows (see also figure 3):
• Problem formulation: Identification of the problem. Includes site specific information, the multiple pressures that exist at the site
• Issue or hazard identification: identification of the hazard or risk, identification of the extent of the problem
• Risk assessment: analysis of the probability of the risk event, the likely impact of the event. Incorporating alternative scenarios.
• Developing risk management or risk minimisation options. These could vary depending on the risk. There may also be a need for prioritisation of these options, especially if multiple wetlands with different ecological character are being affected and/or different drivers of change are included in the area.
• Monitoring and adaptive management– use early warning systems, rapid assessment indicators and/or GIS-based approaches for detecting changes and the effect of the risk management options. Depending on the results from the monitoring studies, adaptive management actions would be taken to modify any of the above steps.
Figure 3: Making risk management decisions (from Finlayson – in prep)
3. Vulnerability assessment framework
As stated above, vulnerability assessment should be seen as a process and include determination of a probability of a risk event occurring, the effect of this on the system, given its sensitivity and resiliency, development of the possible options that can reduce the adverse impacts from the risky event, formulating the desired outcome for the system and monitoring and adaptive management to ensure that the response options being implemented will help achieve the desired outcomes.
The framework suggested here is based on adopting the OECD state-pressure-impact-response model, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment conceptual framework, and draws on the work summarised above. Building on the methods and approaches developed by these workers, the framework incorporates risk assessment (including risk perception by stakeholders) and risk management steps (figure 4). It incorporates components of the concept of ecological character as a basis for developing indicators for assessing the condition and trends as well as for monitoring in support of the wise use of wetlands.
The framework includes the following steps:
• Risk assessment (including risk perception)
o Delimiting the boundaries of the social and biophysical system to be considered and explicitly including spatial, temporal limits
o Identification of past and present drivers of change and existing hazards
o Assessing the present condition and recent trends in the ecological character of the wetlands (using metrics such as indicator species, functional groups etc)
o Carrying out a stakeholders analysis – the people involved in evaluating the potential responses and also affected by the potential changes in the system
o Determining the sensitivity and resiliency including adaptive capacity of the system
o Identifying the wetlands and groups of people that are particularly sensitive to different pressures
o Developing scenarios and storylines with the involvement of the stakeholders to the risk of possible drivers of change and the interaction between them that could lead to future changes,
• Risk minimisation or management
o Identifying the wetlands and groups of people that would not have the ability to cope with the changes, often adverse, given their low present adaptive capacity and/or sensitivity
o developing response options that can minimise the risk of abrupt and/or large changes in the ecological character of wetlands (and thus maintaining their ability to provide the ecosystem services that humans depend on). These can include: regulations, strategic environmental planning, infrastructure/engineering works, rehabilitation/restoration, developing education material, improving community awareness, developing integrated management plans. In some case, given the adaptive capacity, sensitivity and resiliency of the system, no further management response may be needed.
o tradeoff analysis to choose between potential response options and overcoming constraints such as instituional capacity, information/data availability and often finanancial
o Specifying the desired outcomes for the system
• Monitoring and adaptive management throughout the process. This includes a means of measuring the path to the desired outcomes.
One useful concept (borrowing the idea from the poverty alleviation literature) is that of transitory vulnerability and chronic vulnerability. This may be useful for wetlands, given their inherently dynamic nature, and bring together the time frame for responses with the nature of the system. In terms of developing responses, it would thus be useful to consider whether they are responses to transitory vulnerability (in many cases it may mean no response is needed) versus that of a chronic vulnerability.
This framework is very much at the conceptual stage and thus would have to be tested and further developed.
Figure 4: Vulnerability assessment framework for wetlands
4. Disaster management, adaptation and vulnerability assessment
In recent months, vulnerability assessment has been tied in with disaster management and adaptation to climate change. Adaptation to climate change, deals with reducing the vulnerability to climate change through specific options as stated above and particularly in section 2.3. This is a “response” that is being discussed in the international conventions, bilateral, multilateral agencies. Although it is labelled as adaptation to climate change, in reality, given the linkages, it has to be adaptation to the multiple drivers of change and tied into the national sustainable development planning.
Adaptation projects that can be useful for case studies include:
• Global Environment Facility (GEF)/World Bank funded adaptation project in Kiribati. It involved a consultation process, which identified the internal responses to deal with changes in climate variability, sea storms etc and, external responses and then how the responses can be implemented. It incorporates human needs, traditional knowledge and practices (**need a web ref).
• GEF/World Bank funded project on the grasslands of Andes (need a name and ref)
There are a series of projects that are or will be funded by the GEF under its Strategic Priority on Adaptation which was developed following guidance from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties on the need to address adaptation as well as mitigation.
Most disaster management studies (Alwang et al 2001) are based on some version of the following relationship
Vulnerability = risk - Coping
Hazard here is defined as a function of: probability; primacy (shock value based on time elapsed since previous occurrence); predictability (degree of warning available); prevalence (the extent and duration of hazard impacts); and pressure (the intensity of impact). Coping is a function of: perceptions (of risk and potential avenues of action-- the ability to cope is information contingent); possibilities (options ranging from avoidance and insurance, prevention, mitigation, coping); private action (degree to which social capital can be invoked); and public action.
Disaster management usually breaks vulnerability into two components and often concentrates on households:
i) risk mitigation or disaster preparedness which includes coping capacity (see also table 2) and
ii) disaster relief - ex-post or emergency response to often a sudden shock to the system.
Characteristics of a household that are essential determinants of vulnerability include the capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural disaster. Resilience is implicitly included. This has parallel to the sensitivity, resilience and adaptive capacity highlighted in section 1.
Disaster management can be a chronic change that passes a certain threshold (e.g. the more frequent and intense droughts) and in other cases a catastrophic event, e.g. large-scale floods or storms. It is not clear, and thus there is an information gap, on understanding the relationship between the magnitude of a shock and the ability of a system to cope with it if it was resilient, with high adaptive capacity to many of the slowly changing pressures, versus a system that is highly sensitive system and has low adaptive capacity.
Adaptation options can be seen as a response to present and future projected changes in pressures and follow along the vulnerability assessment framework. Disaster preparedness can be seen to be part of developing responses to vulnerability. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the report is developing the vulnerability assessment framework, in reality, little attention is paid to this and few funds are allocated with much emphasis on disaster relief.
5. Challenges and information gaps
There are a number of challenges that have arisen in various works and can be summarised as follows.
Challenges to deal with “multiple” vulnerability in a system: :
• Vulnerability is to a particular drivers of change or a hazard and thus any system can have “multiple vulnerability”. How can these be put together or prioritised is an issue that needs to be addressed.
• Vulnerability is location specific and for a wetland, different habitats in the system can have different vulnerability. There is thus a challenge on how these can be put presented and responses implemented.
• Often, the mismatch between ecosystem/catchment boundaries and institutional (management) jurisdiction needs to be addressed to implement responses
Data, information and scenario development
• Reliable present land use and land cover and changes in these, including data on distribution and extent of wetlands for particular ecosystems and the surrounding area (catchment or zones)
• Long-term monitoring of key biophysical parameters in the wetlands and their catchments and adjacent seas, thus providing time series data for developing bench marks or baselines
• Integration of data collection (inventory), risk assessment, risk management and monitoring and shortfalls of some of these (see Annex 2)
• Challenges in downscaling climate and other models
• Developing scenarios that would give the likely future changes in drivers, status and condition of the system, given the lack of knowledge in the present
• cost/benefit analysis for deciding between different options (see Annex 2)
Perceptions of the need to address vulnerability of wetlands
• the decision-makers and societal view of the systems importance and thus the need to address vulnerability
• there is a perception that the system is able to cope with slow changes (e.g., slow increases in temperature, precipitation) and less likely to deal with abrupt changes, such as the ones associated with large scale changes in land use that affect the hydrology.
• There is a need for case studies of the systems and human societies coping strategies (or autonomous adaptation) taking the present climate variability as a surrogate for some changes likely to occur in the future.
References
Alwang, J., Siegel, P.B. and Jorgensen, S.L. 2001. Vulnerability: A View From Different Disciplines. Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No. 0115, The World Bank. .
APN 2004. Asia Pacific Network Newsletter vol 10(4).
Bayliss B, Brennan K, Eliot I, Finlayson M, Hall R, House T, Pidgeon B, Walden D and Waterman P, 1997. Vulnerability assessment of predicted climate change and sea level rise in the Alligator Rivers Region, Northern Territory Australia. Supervising Scientist Report 123, Supervising Scientist, Canberra
Downing, T. and Dougherty, B., 2004. Toward a core methodology for climate vulnerability and adaptation. Stockholm Environment Institute,
Finlayson, C.M. 2002 Integrated inventory, assessment and monitoring of tropical wetlands. Environmental Monitoring of tropical and Subtropical Wetlands. T. Berhard, K. Mosepele and L. Ranmberg, Univ Botswana, Maun, Botswana. ees.ufl.edu/homepp/brown/hoorc/contents.htm
IPCC CZMS, 1990: Strategies for Adaptation to Sea Level Rise. Report of the Coastal Zone Management Subgroup, Response Strategies Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Hague, The Netherlands, 122 pp.
IPCC 2002. Climate Change and Biodiversity. Gitay, H. Suarez, A. Watson, R. T. and Dokken, D (eds.). IPCC Technical Paper V. WMO/UNEP Publication also at
IPCC, 2001: Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report. A Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Watson, R.T. and the Core Writing Team (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA, 398 pp. Also at
MA 2003 – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework for Assessment. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 245 pp.
MA 2005 – Wetland Synthesis report
Sharma, M., I. Burton, M. van Aalst, M. Dilley, and G. Acharya (2000). “Reducing Vulnerability to Environmental Variability: Background Paper for the Bank’s Environmental Strategy,” The World Bank: Washington, D.C.
Van Dam, R. and Finlayson, 1999. Wetland Risk Assessment Framework. Resolution VII.10 of the Ramsar Convention
Walden, D. R van Dam, M Finlayson, M Storrs, J Lowry & D Kriticos, 2004. A risk assessment of the tropical wetland weed Mimosa pigra in northern Australia. Supervising Scientist Report 177 Department of the Environment and Heritage.
Watson, R.T. and Berghall, O., (eds) Biodiversity and Climate Change. Convention on Biological Diversity Publication. SBSTTA 9 report of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert group on biodiversity and climate change. CBD Tech paper 110 in CBD series. Also at doc/publications/cbd-ts-10.pdf
Annex 1: Various “assessments”
Assessment is a term commonly associated with environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment. There are three approaches that are closely tied to vulnerability assessment: strategic environmental assessment (SEA), environmental impact assessment (including social impact assessment) and risk assessment. As discussed in the main part of the paper, risk assessment can form part of vulnerability assessment.
Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) provide a process for assessing the possible environmental and social impacts at the project level, whereas strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) can be used as policy planning tools at a range of spatial scales up to the national scale and provide an analytical framework to assess the impacts of multiple projects and broad cross-cutting policies (Watson et al 2003). It is important that SEAs be initiated at the earliest stages of policy planning and, as with EIAs, with the involvement of the public throughout the process. Indeed, SEAs can provide a forum in which a wider group of people can be involved in decision-making. SEA can include policies, programme and planning.
Guidelines for climate change impacts and adaptation have been incorporated into an EIA process (cefconsultants.ns.ca). In most cases, this has involved impact assessment of industrial and infrastructure projects (mines, quarries, hydro-electric development, offshore energy projects). This is analogous to a risk assessment for a project (see Box 3: screening tool). For general national planning and natural resource management, it may be appropriate to incorporate vulnerability assessment as part of strategic environmental assessment (SEA)
Annex 2: Vulnerability as used in different disciplines
Extracted from Alwang et al (2001)
In economics literature, vulnerability focuses on an outcome of a process of household responses to risks, given a set of underlying conditions. Vulnerable households are those that have moved or are likely to move into a state of poverty or destitution as a result of the cumulative process of risk and response. The outcome (poverty status) is an ex post state that is assumed to be the primary concern of policy makers. This conceptualization has led some economists to use measures of variability in outcomes (e.g. income variance. especially downside shocks) as their measure of vulnerability. The focus of much of this literature is on measuring outcomes (using income or consumption in monetary terms as a metric) and identifying indicators of outcomes (e.g., vulnerability to measurable welfare loss, crime vulnerability).
A large body of literature addresses the relationship between human vulnerability and natural disasters. This literature’s common theme is the idea that vulnerability is defined with respect to natural disasters, and people, households, communities, etc. are vulnerable to damages from a natural disaster. They focus on risks and refer to them as hazards. The degree of vulnerability is determined, in part, by social factors; for instance, vulnerability as a predisposition to famine before the impact of a specific trigger event. Vulnerability is usually defined an as underlying condition, distinguished from the risky events that may trigger the outcome. In the disaster management literature, everyone is vulnerable but some, due to their location choices, etc. are more vulnerable than others. This literature has, at least since the early 1990s, recognized that the degree of vulnerability of households, communities, regions, etc. includes elements of risks and responsiveness to risks. Triggers of natural disasters occur, but household and social systems allow them to become (or prevent them from becoming) disasters through their response. A definition of vulnerability from this literature is “…characteristics of a person or group in terms of their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural disaster” The literature also incorporates a time dimension: the extent of a disaster cannot be measured without knowledge of the resilience of the affected groups; this resilience plays out over time.
In risk assessment, there is a often a need to prioritise the response options. This often depends on cost-benefit analysis, multicriteria analsyis etc, which need to consider market and non-market valuation techniques. There is also uncertainty about risks and relationships between risks and damages.
[1] Visiting Fellow, Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia. Email: habiba.gitay@anu.edu.au
[i] Currently data provided by the Japanese Meteorological Association from their Earth Simulator project is used for global coverage. This is the highest resolution model (20x20 km) of its kind and provides the best available projections of extreme events. Data from other regional downscaled models is being added.
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