Climate change vulnerability assessment

Abstract

Current trends and future projections in the earth’s climate indicate that the planet’s resources would be exposed to vastly different environment in the future. The change in exposures would have more dramatic impacts on many sectors, including water, and make them more vulnerable than the past century, during which our conservation traditions evolved. Increasing advocacies for climate change adaptation has created contexts for vulnerability assessment of the changes. As a result, literatures on climate change vulnerability assessment in different sectors are growing. Vulnerability assessment could be considered as an umbrella under which a broad spectrum of issues related to water resources availability and management can be analyzed. The vulnerability knowledgebase further assists to formulate Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) policies and protection measures and provides a basis for decision makers to prioritize the appropriate actions. It also draws attention to the main sources of vulnerability and scans the opportunities to seek adaptive management of water resources. Three key motivations for carrying out vulnerability assessments are the following (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2011): (1) help in setting management and planning priorities, (2) assist in informing and crafting adaptation strategies, and (3) enable more efficient allocation of resources.