Assessing Human Vulnerability to Climate Change from an Evolutionary Perspective - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 75

Diversity in a system is also likely to increase its resilience, that is, its ability to
return to its pre-disturbed state after a shock without experiencing any fundamental
change. Linkages between biodiversity and the resilience of ecosystems have been
well documented (see, e.g. Tilman and Polasky 2005 ), as have linkages between agro
biodiversity and food security (Di Falco and Chavas 2009 ; Galluzzi et al. 2011 ).
Biodiversity spreads risk across a variety of species analogous to the way diversity
reduces risk in an investment portfolio. In this manner, biodiversity provides a
threshold against irreversible and potentially catastrophic environmental change.
Similarly, “diversity related to a wide range of activities, including agricultural
techniques, industrial production methods, means of communication, languages,
institutions, legislation and informal rules (culture)” is thought to increase the resil-
ience of human systems in the face of structural change (Rammel and van den
Bergh 2003 ). Diversity in a system can be retained, for example, through cultural
or ecological conservation measures. It can also be created through innovative
processes that add novelty to the system such as entrepreneurialism, academia,
R&D and technology transfer.
Central to adaptive capacity of human systems is the adaptive fl exibility of insti-
tutions and governance structures in response to agents' attempts to alter them. On
governance of ecological resources, Dietz et al. ( 2008 ) argued:
Devising effective governance systems is akin to a coevolutionary race. A set of rules
crafted to fi t on set of sociological conditions can erode as social, economic, and techno-
logical developments increase the potential for human damage to ecosystems and even to
the biosphere itself. Furthermore, humans devise ways of evading governance rules. Thus,
successful commons governance requires that rules evolve.

Evidence suggests that adaptive governance requires a variety of institutional types
including markets, hierarchy and community self-governance (Dietz et al. 2008 ).
Importantly, institutional arrangements should be designed to be fl exible and respon-
sive to changing conditions through mechanisms that ensure appropriate feedback of
information and the analytic deliberation of various informed stakeholders.
The following section will discuss the different methods that have been used to
identify vulnerable groups and assess vulnerability. Ultimately we argue that the
data necessary to assess vulnerability from an evolutionary perspective can only be
obtained through qualitative techniques.

4.3 Identifying Vulnerable Groups and Assessing Vulnerability

Various studies have attempted to assess human vulnerability to climate change
using methodologies that incorporate techniques from both the social and physical
sciences. These studies range from climate-impact assessments, which estimate the
potential impact that different climate scenarios would have on specifi c sectors and
scales, to vulnerability assessments, which incorporate progressively more non-
climate determinants of vulnerability to climate change, including adaptive capacity
(Füssel and Klein 2006 ).