Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-8 (section)

=== 8.3.1 Assessments of Risk and Vulnerability ===

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Conventional assessments of risks and the benefits of adaptation and risk reduction measures in the context of climate change primarily focus on the financial value of the avoided losses (in USD) and the assets that are going to be protected from adverse consequences of climate change or extreme events due to specific measures (e.g., dyke construction). Even though these assessments fall short of measuring the real costs of addressing climate change impacts (see [[#DeFries--2019|DeFries et al., 2019]] ), they often support the definition of priorities in terms of protecting economic values and assets. However, these assessments do not sufficiently account for how climate change impacts and imposes risks on poor people, nor do they capture issues of climate justice and more complex societal impacts and future risks. For example, various observed losses in the context of climate change cannot be sufficiently expressed in terms of an economic value (see [[#8.3.5|Section 8.3.5]] ), but these items or assets are highly relevant for various people with limited economic resources ( [[#Hallegatte--2017|Hallegatte et al., 2017]] ). Consequently, the assessment of risks from climate change facing particularly poor people requires comprehensive assessments of human vulnerability, resilience and the impacts of climate change on human well-being going beyond a simple temperature–societal-impact understanding. Knowledge about methods and approaches to assess human or human–environmental vulnerability and livelihood security, including aspects of intersectionality, is important in order to explore whether or not adaptation and development programmes are able to reduce vulnerability. The body of literature on these issues has grown significantly since the AR5 publication ( [[#IPCC--2014a|IPCC, 2014a]] ; [[#Moser--2014|Moser, 2014]] ).

This literature underscores that approaches to assess resilience, vulnerability and human well-being include global assessments that can inform strategies and priority settings for adaptation and risk reduction in the context of climate change ( ''high confidence'' ) ( [[#WHO--2014b|WHO, 2014b]] ; [[#Young--2015|Young et al., 2015]] ; [[#Feldmeyer--2017|Feldmeyer et al., 2017]] ; [[#GIZ%20and%20BMZ--2017|GIZ and BMZ, 2017]] ; [[#Hallegatte--2017|Hallegatte et al., 2017]] ; [[#Birkmann--2021a|Birkmann et al., 2021a]] ; [[#Garschagen--2021|Garschagen et al., 2021]] ; Toolkit, 2021).

These quantitative global assessments that have emerged within the last decades have not been sufficiently assessed in former IPCC reports, for example, in terms of the agreement on spatial hotspots or in terms of regional clusters of vulnerability and the linkages between past societal impacts and levels of vulnerability. The assessed literature shows that conditions and phenomena that characterise systemic vulnerability (hazard independent vulnerability), such as high levels of poverty and gender inequality, limited access to basic infrastructure services or state fragility are highly relevant for understanding societal impacts of climatic hazards and future risks of climate change (e.g., [[#Cutter--2003|Cutter et al., 2003]] ; [[#ADB--2005|ADB, 2005]] ; [[#Cutter--2008|Cutter and Finch, 2008]] ; [[#World%20Bank--2008|World Bank, 2008]] ; [[#UNISDR--2009|UNISDR, 2009]] ; [[#Crawford--2015|Crawford et al., 2015]] ; [[#Rufat--2015|Rufat et al., 2015]] ; [[#Carrao--2016|Carrao et al., 2016]] ; [[#Gupta--2016|Gupta, 2016]] ; [[#Rahman--2018|Rahman, 2018]] ; [[#Andrijevic--2020|Andrijevic et al., 2020]] ; [[#Jamshed--2020a|Jamshed et al., 2020a]] ; [[#Feldmeyer--2021|Feldmeyer et al., 2021]] ; [[#Garschagen--2021|Garschagen et al., 2021]] ). These factors and context conditions also influence individual vulnerability at household or community level. Access to basic services, such as water and sanitation, are linked to human rights and if not granted increase the likelihood that people disproportionately suffer from climate-induced hazards, due to their pre-existing lack of access to such services. In addition, increasing climate hazards further constrain the access to such services ( [[#United%20Nations--2018|United Nations, 2018]] ; [[#Kohlitz--2019|Kohlitz et al., 2019]] ; [[#Gupta--2020|Gupta et al., 2020]] ).

There is an increasing evidence base that successful adaptation and risk reduction strategies need to acknowledge not only climate change and/or specific climate hazards (sea level rise, flooding, droughts, etc.), but also human vulnerability and existing adaptation gaps and thereby the different starting points that societies or different groups have towards climate resilience (see [[#UNEP--2016|UNEP, 2016]] ; [[#Birkmann--2021a|Birkmann et al., 2021a]] ). Recent reports underscore that development and capacity indicators are useful to assess the broader adaptation challenges and adaptive capacities at global scale independent of a specific climatic hazard. Examples include the percentage of population with access to improved water sources and improved sanitation, the number of physicians per 1000 people or the dependency ratio ( [[#UNEP--2018|UNEP, 2018]] ). These indicators are also part of more comprehensive vulnerability assessments, such as those assessed within this section namely the vulnerability components of the INFORM risk index (e.g., INFORM, 2019) and of the WorldRiskIndex (e.g., [[#Birkmann--2016|Birkmann and Welle, 2016]] ; [[#Birkmann--2021a|Birkmann et al., 2021a]] ; [[#Feldmeyer--2021|Feldmeyer et al., 2021]] ). Recent literature underscores that measuring vulnerability is key for assessing factors that significantly determine actual and future adverse consequences of climate change and complex risks ( [[#Cutter--2008|Cutter and Finch, 2008]] ; [[#Cardona--2012|Cardona et al., 2012]] ; [[#de%20Sherbinin--2019|de Sherbinin et al., 2019]] ; [[#Peters--2019|Peters et al., 2019]] ; [[#Jamshed--2020c|Jamshed et al., 2020c]] ; [[#Visser--2020|Visser et al., 2020]] ; [[#Feldmeyer--2021|Feldmeyer et al., 2021]] ). However, there is also important critique on indicator-based assessments of vulnerability (see [[#de%20Sherbinin--2019|de Sherbinin et al., 2019]] ; [[#Rufat--2019|Rufat et al., 2019]] ; [[#Visser--2020|Visser et al., 2020]] ), particularly with regard to issues of validation and its use in decision-making processes. Nevertheless, we observe an emerging agreement in the literature that resilience building and adaptation to climate change has to be informed by climate and multidimensional assessment of the vulnerability of people, different groups and coupled human–environmental systems, including both quantitative and qualitative assessment approaches ( [[#IPCC--2014b|IPCC, 2014b]] ; [[#UNEP--2018|UNEP, 2018]] ; [[#Singleton--2021|Singleton et al., 2021]] ; [[#Birkmann--2022|Birkmann et al., 2022]] ). Since, interdependencies between regional (supranational/sub-continental), national, community and individual vulnerability have often been overlooked, this chapter assesses both global and regional vulnerability, as well as local livelihood vulnerabilities.

While past research regarding the nexus between climate change and poverty often focused on vulnerable groups in rural areas of low-income countries ( [[#de%20Sherbinin--2014|de Sherbinin, 2014]] ; [[#IPCC--2014a|IPCC, 2014a]] ; [[#Barbier--2018|Barbier and Hochard, 2018]] ), new global mega-trends, such as urbanisation, underscore the need to assess both rural and urban communities and their vulnerability. In many rapidly growing cities in the Global South, access to land and to housing is a challenge, particularly for the poor and marginalised, contributing to a further increase in informal settlements that often emerge in highly hazard-exposed areas ( [[#Jeschonnek--2014|Jeschonnek et al., 2014]] ; [[#Rana--2021|Rana et al., 2021]] ). In addition, migration from rural areas to urban centres, also due to increasing adverse impacts of climate change on rural livelihoods, can add another level of complexity ( [[#Flavell--2020|Flavell et al., 2020]] ). Moreover, the context in which such urbanisation processes take place is key. For example, rapidly growing medium-sized cities, for example in West Africa, often do not have sufficient financial, technical and institutional resources to adapt urban structures to climate change ( [[#Birkmann--2016|Birkmann and Welle, 2016]] ; [[#Birkmann--2016|Birkmann et al., 2016]] ; [[#de%20Sherbinin--2017|de Sherbinin et al., 2017]] ). Hence, vulnerability in urban contexts is an emerging issue for international, national and local adaptation programmes. Rather than focusing on mega-cities and their exposure as primary hotspots, more attention has to be given to rapidly growing small- and medium-sized cities and their adaptation needs from the perspective of vulnerability reduction and poverty.

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