Risk assessment

The purpose of the current report is to provide baseline information to the project staff and partners, to facilitate subsequent working steps, such as stakeholder consultations, climate risk and vulnerability assessments, and the prioritisation of adaptation options. The report has been compiled based on accessible secondary data. In depth stakeholders’ consultations and firsthand data collection were not undertaken as part of the report preparation. It is thus a living document which will be updated throughout the project implementation phase.

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.