Local Vulnerability Indicators and Adaptation to Climate Change: A Survey

Date
Mar 2015
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate interdisciplinary research on vulnerability indexes to climate change. The paper presents a systematized analysis of recent literature on agriculture, coastal areas, water resources, forests and health sectors. The paper examines in particular different aspects of vulnerability indexes to climate change, and emphasizes the importance of deriving vulnerability measures from sector-specific local studies after comparison of various types of sector-specific local institutional arrangement as coping strategies to mitigate climate impacts. The paper also explores possibilities to propose sectoral indices that can be applied systematically at the local level for the practitioners. The survey paper tries to provide pertinent background information regarding the choice of influential variables in the design of field studies and suggests future direction of in-depth empirical research on vulnerability to climate change.