Chapter 19: Vulnerability to Climate Change and Reasons for Concern: A Synthesis
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19.4. Distribution of Impacts
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19.4.2. Distribution of Impacts by Sector
Vulnerability to the health effects of climate change also differs across regions and within countries, and differences in adaptive capacity again are important. Box 19-4 notes that wealthier countries will be better able to cope with risks to human health than less wealthy countries. Risks also vary within countries, however. In a country such as the United States, the very young and the very old are most sensitive to heat waves and cold spells, so regions with a rapidly growing or rapidly aging p o pulation would have relatively large exposure to potential health impacts. In addition, poor people in wealthy countries may be more vulnerable to health impacts than those with average incomes in the same countries. For example, Kalkstein and Greene (1997) found that in the United States, residents of inner cities, which have a higher proportion of low-income people, are at greater risk of heat-stress mortality than others. Differences among income groups may be more pronounced in developing and transition countries because of the absence of the elaborate safety nets that developed countries have constructed in response to other, nonclimate stresses.
These observations underscore one of the critical insights in Chapter 18: Adaptive capacity differs considerably between sectors and systems. The ability to adapt to and cope with climate change impacts is a function of wealth, technology, information, skills, infrastructure, institutions, equity, empowerment, and ability to spread risk. The poorest segments of societies are most vulnerable to climate change. Poverty determines vulnerability via several mechanisms, principally in access to resources to allow coping with extreme weather events and through marginalization from decisionmaking and social security (Kelly and Adger, 2000). Vulnerability is likely to be differentiated by gender—for example, through the “feminization of poverty” brought about by differential gender roles in natural resource management (Agarwal, 1991). If climate change increases water scarcity, women are likely to bear the labor and nutritional impacts.
The suggested distribution of vulnerability to climate change can be observed clearly in the pattern of vulnerability to natural disasters (e.g., Burton et al., 1993). The poor are more vulnerable to natural disasters than the rich because they live in more h a zardous places, have less protection, and have less reserves, insurance, and alternatives. Adger (1999), for instance, shows that marginalized populations within coastal communities in northern Vietnam are more susceptible to the impacts of presentday weather hazards and that, importantly, the wider policy context can exacerbate this vulnerability. In the Vietnamese case, the transition to market-based agriculture has decreased the access of the poor to social safety nets and facilitated the ability of rich households to overexploit mangroves, which previously provided protection from storms. Similarly, Mustafa (1998) demonstrates differentiation of flood hazards in lowland Pakistan by social group: Insecure tenure leads to greater impacts on poorer communities. See Chapter 18 for further examples. The natural disaster literature also concludes that organization, information, and preparation can help mitigate large damages at a moderate cost (e.g., Burton et al., 1993). This underscores the need for adaptation, particularly in poor countries.
