Vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation to sea level related hazards taking an ecosystem based approach

Abstract

The least developed countries are the most vulnerable to climate change. This mantra is heard again and again - most notably perhaps at meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Indeed partly in response to such thinking, much of the international funding available for climate change adaptation is only accessible to the least developed countries. One seemingly logical extrapolation from this stated correlation is that a perfectly reasonable national adaptation plan might be no more than a development plan. In other words, if a country can find a way to get off the ‘least developed’ list, for example by focusing its effort on gross domestic profit (GDP) growth, this would have the additional benefit, even without thinking at all about climate change per se, of the country simultaneously coming off the ‘most vulnerable’ list. The perceived correlation between vulnerability and development has also, ironically, lead international adaptation financing institutions to adopt the troubling concept of ‘additionality’, whereby in order to obtain funds least developed countries must show how their planned actions are in some way specifically addressing climate impacts, above and beyond business as usual development. In this chapter, I focus on sea level hazards to argue for an ecosystem-based approach to increased resilience in the face of climate change (Alverson, 2012). This is an approach that may at times complement, but may also be orthogonal to, traditional GDP focused development, and one that can benefit all countries, and local communities therein, irrespective of where they may lie on the development scale.