Morgan, Charlotte

There are a multitude of limiting factors preventing ecosystems, communities, organisms and individuals from adapting to change. Ecological and physical limits comprise the natural limitations to adaptation, associated largely with the natural environment, ranging from ecosystem thresholds to geographical and geological limitations. Climate change will require many disciplines and capabilities to come together to understand the full extent of the effects and to analyse and develop potential solutions.

This review assessed the suitability of various frameworks, approaches and tools for conducting vulnerability assessments, for use in the EU funded IUCN project “Building Resilience to Climate Change in Coastal Southeast Asia”. In particular their suitability for use at the provincial, community, and household/individual levels of analysis was emphasised. The majority of Vulnerability Assessments (VAs) treat vulnerability as a measure of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the system or system component in question; setting guidelines to measure each attribute.

This report presents a rapid assessment of the vulnerability to climate change of coastal habitats and selected species in the eight focal areas of the IUCN project ‘Building coastal resilience in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand’: Koh Kong and Kampot (Cambodia), Chanthaburi and Trat (Thailand), and Ben Tre, Can Gio, Kien Giang and Soc Trang (Vietnam).