Evaluating the progress made in climate change adaptation using indicators of resilience, Part III: Resilience & Vulnerability

Part 3: The Definition of Resilience and its Relation to Vulnerability

As discussed in Part 2, one way of moving beyond the current focus on evaluating the outputs of adaptation-related interventions is to examine short-term changes in people’s circumstances that affect their ability to cope with climate shocks and stresses – in other words, their resilience.

Donors are increasingly focusing on the concept of resilience in their climate change programming. DFID’s BRACED programme  Resilience is related to that of vulnerability, although these terms are not equivalent.

Initiatives such as DFID’s BRACED programme are a good example of this, as is the UK’s International Climate Fund (ICF), of which BRACED is a part. One of the ICF’s key performance indicators seeks to estimate the number of people with improved resilience as a result of ICF support. Resilience is also central to the results frameworks of the Pilot Programme on Climate Resilience (PPCR) and Green Climate Fund (GCF).

This focus on resilience reflects something of a shift in emphasis from the concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘adaptive capacity’, and indeed from the concept of adaptation - concepts popularised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)..

The reasons for this shift are no doubt diverse, but may include the negative connotations of the word ‘vulnerability', as well as its multiple definitions and the often sterile academic arguments about what constitutes vulnerability.

A key problem with the concept of vulnerability is that it is defined in different and contradictory ways in the climate change literature.  Some definitions describe vulnerability as being dependent upon the rate and magnitude of climate change and its variation. That is, a person might be labelled “vulnerable” because there is a cataclysmic climate extreme coming their way, such as a strong hurricane.

Other definitions treat vulnerability not in terms of the external elements that may be threatening people’s safety and livelihoods, but rather as a set of internal factors that make people or communities more or less likely to be harmed by a given extreme event.

The 2007 Report of Working Group II of the IPCC included both of the above contradictory definitions of vulnerability.

While the concept of resilience is hardly the subject of universal agreement, it arguably has not been associated with quite the same level of confusion as that of vulnerability.  

While the need for adaptation is widely recognised, the extent to which climate change has become a partisan political issue also means that the idea of 'building resilience' is likely to be more palatable to certain political interests than ‘adapting to climate change'.

Understanding and “operationalising” resilience

Resilience and vulnerability (and the related construct of ‘adaptive capacity’) are abstract concepts, and have been framed and defined differently in different fields and contexts, and also by different authors within the same field.

Broadly speaking, vulnerability is viewed as a system’s susceptibility to harm when exposed to a given external stress or shock[1], while resilience is viewed in terms of a system’s capacity to maintain its fundamental character and functioning in the face of such a stress or shock.

Both terms make most sense when applied to specific systems facing specific hazards (i.e. physical manifestations of climate change and variability), over specific timescales.

For example, a study in the Rukum district of Nepal found that households that owned an ox could respond more quickly to variations in seasonal rainfall in terms of field preparation and planting.[2] Households that needed to hire an ox were less responsive.

We can say that ownership of an ox makes people more resilient or less vulnerable to increasingly erratic seasonal rainfall in this context. Ox ownership therefore can be use as an asset-based indicator of resilience or vulnerability, depending on how such an indicator is defined and constructed.

One way of reconciling these the concepts of resilience and vulnerability with each other (and also with the concept of adaptive capacity) is simply to consider the suite of factors that affect a system’s ability to anticipate, plan for, avoid, cope with, recover from and adapt to specific stresses and shocks. (It is worth pointing out here that ‘systems’ can include ecosystems, economic systems, sectors, infrastructure, agricultural or livelihood systems, populations, communities, households, and even individuals.) 

Where climate hazards are expected to occur in the near-term and to be short-lived, the most important factors are likely to be those relevant to coping and recovery. Examples of such near-term, short-lived hazards include seasonal heat extremes, tropical storms and extreme rainfall events.

Where hazards are expected in the medium to long-term and/or to be long-lived or progressive, the most important factors are likely to be those related to adaptation. Examples of such hazards include sea-level rise, long-term trends towards wetter or drier conditions, and a reduction in snow and ice cover (e.g. glaciers and permafrost).

In this framing, vulnerability and resilience are flexible concepts that can be applied across different developmental and climatic contexts.

This flexible approach can help us make the concept of resilience “operational” for the design, monitoring and evaluation of development and adaptation interventions, and for the longer-term tracking of the cumulative effects of different adaptation actions.

[1] Based on the second definition of vulnerability described above, around which communities of research and practice, led by the IPCC, seem to be converging.

[2] From Pokhrel et al. 2015. Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development in Nepal, p.17. IIED. Download: http://pubs.iied.org/10103IIED

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This blog is in 5 parts:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V