Social Vulnerability and Human Development of Brazilian Coastal Populations

Abstract

There is a considerable gap linking human dimensions and marine ecosystem services with Sustainable Development Goals, and one of these issues relate to differing perspectives and ideas around concepts of human development. There is also a lack of contemporary evaluations of coastal communities from developing nations under the lens of wellbeing and social vulnerability indexes. This study contributes to that discussion by presenting an analysis of Brazilian coastal municipalities, based on two indexes: The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and the Municipal Human Development Index (MHDI). These indicators intend to map some aspects of social well-being and development in the Brazilian territory under different perspectives. MHDI illustrates the average population conditions in a certain territory for humans to thrive, while the SVI points more specifically to the lack of assets necessary for wellbeing in a territory. The main aims are to map inequalities between coastal municipalities based on these two indexes and to provide a critical view reinforcing the importance of also considering natural capital as a key issue for wellbeing. Both indexes were developed with data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics Census of 2010, the most recent one available for municipalities. Overall, 65.9 and 78% of a total of 387 Brazilian coastal municipalities assessed were ranked below SVI and MHDI country average values, respectively. Both indexes indicated higher human development conditions in Southern municipalities than in Northern ones, especially for income and education conditions, also showing large heterogeneity of discrepancies among and within regions. The importance of combined approaches for local socioeconomic wellbeing improvements, as measured by the MHDI and the SVI, and natural capital optimization seems essential for improvements in coastal communities’ quality-of-life conditions.