As noted earlier, the level of vulnerability experienced by an individual, a system, or a group, or a community to climate impacts is inversely related to the adaptive capacity at their disposal.
A reduction in adaptive capacity leads to a more severe vulnerability. Studies have noted that the term 'vulnerability' to elicit different meanings across various disciplines (Cutter et al 2009;
Fussel & Klein, 2005), Liverman (1990, p.29) relates vulnerability to concepts such as
“resilience, marginality, susceptibility, adaptability, fragility, and risk”. This depiction of vulnerability appears to elicit experiences that are related to the vulnerability of a certain marginal group of people to environmental hazards, where there is urgent need to develop resilience.
The15 IPCC (2012) defines vulnerability as a 'predisposition' (for individuals or groups or systems) to be adversely affected by the impacts of hazards. Wisner et al (2004), cited in Kreibich et al (2017, p.954) describe such predisposition as constituting “an internal characteristic” of the affected persons or society and the situations that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, or recover from the adverse effects of the physical events." This definition and explanation also seem to show that vulnerability relates to adaptation, in that the more tools and resources available to adapt, the lower the degree of vulnerability. Kreibich et al (2017, p.954) studied a series of eight successive flooding events and discovered that
15 Resilience is the capacity to recover from the negative impacts of flood events. Resilience may be a product of one’s innate or developed characteristics.
reduced damages caused by subsequent events, starting from the second, was as a result of increased risk awareness, preparedness, and enhancement in organisational strategy to manage such an emergency. Dow (1992) defines vulnerability as “the differential capacity of groups and individuals to deal with hazards, based on their positions within physical and social worlds” (cited in Paul 2013, p.3).
Another related definition of vulnerability to environmental hazards is that given by Cutter et al (2009). Cutter et al (2009, p.2-3) conceptualise vulnerability as “the susceptibility of a given population, system, or place to harm from exposure to hazard, and directly affects [concerns]
the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from hazards and disasters”. Related to Cutter et al’s (2009) definition of vulnerability is the explanation given by O’Brien et al (2004b).
According to O’Brien et al (2004b), social scientists use the term “vulnerability” as ‘an explanatory model’ to further an understanding of specific disastrous events, whereas natural scientists use it ‘descriptively’ to illustrate the effects of natural disasters on a system (cited in Fussel (2007, p.155). Nonetheless, scholars such as Blaike et al (2003) and Adger & Kelly (1999) assert that social vulnerability is either enhanced or reduced by factors such as poverty, inequality, marginalisation, food entitlements, access to loans and insurance, and quality of houses and other infrastructures.
Literature places vulnerability into four categories or types. The first type is physical vulnerability, which has to do with the susceptibility of the biophysical environment to disasters. This type of vulnerability could be a result of the environment's geographical location. For instance, places close to the sea, mountains, or hills are likely to be highly susceptible to environmental or natural disasters. Curbing physical vulnerability, therefore, requires a proper environmental and infrastructural planning, especially of commercial and residential buildings. In the same vein, Liverman (1990, p.29) describes physical vulnerability as vulnerability due to 'biophysical conditions' and explains that the people most susceptible to this type of vulnerability are those who live in floodplains and other areas that are likely to experience high sea-level rise, drier conditions, storms. Again, addressing such vulnerability simply means moving the people away from such areas or improving the environmental and infrastructural planning to avoid physical damages during climate hazards.
Nevertheless, people living in such fragile areas are probably those who do not have many options to afford a more secure location. They constitute the poor and probably the marginalised group in society. People may also live in such areas because of exclusionary
political or social conditions which marginalise them. For instance, during the apartheid era in South Africa, the Blacks were forced to live in the most marginal and dejected townships16. These townships are mainly floodplains, with poor infrastructures, and uneven and degraded landscapes. Other social factors, including political-economic situations can combine with the physical conditions to render a specific population or group vulnerable to disaster impacts.
The second type of vulnerability is economic vulnerability. Economic vulnerability is related to resource access. An individual or a community is economically vulnerable if it has insufficient access to natural resources necessary to sustain livelihood and enhance adaptive capacity. Another type of vulnerability, the attitudinal vulnerability, occurs when the attitude of individuals in a community towards change is harmful in a manner that the members are easily predisposed to conflict, hopelessness, and pessimism. A community is highly vulnerable attitudinally in cases of a disunited or individualistic community. The fourth type of vulnerability, social vulnerability, occurs when people are susceptible to discrimination based on race, gender, class, or religious affiliation, resulting in unequal participation of these people in decision making. Culture, local norms and values, traditions, political accountability, weak political leadership, and economic standard also play a crucial role in determining social vulnerability (M & E, 2019). Accordingly, some scholars that discuss socio-economic vulnerability (see for instance, Fussel, 2007, p. 158), likely combine both social and economic vulnerability to describe how the political institutions and local norms that determine access to resources assess the vulnerability of certain groups or individuals. The above description of vulnerability relates well to a neo-political economy approach to vulnerability analysis.
Liverman (1990) uses a neo-Marxist political economy framework to describe social vulnerability. Liverman (1990, p.30-31) explains that the exploitation of specific regions or groups—through resource outflow, land expropriation, exploitative labour conditions, and political oppression—aggravates the vulnerability level of those regions or groups. Social vulnerability, as described here, arises because of structures and institutions that determine access to resources or that perpetuate inequity. This approach helps to dig deep into the root causes of social vulnerability for policy interventions to reduce the vulnerability of a specific
16 As explained by Godehart & Perneger (2007), the term ‘township’ or ‘location’ in the history of the South African geographic landscape refer to the often underdeveloped racially segregated urban areas that, from the late 19th century until the end of apartheid, were reserved for non-Whites, namely Indians, Africans and Coloureds. Townships were usually built on the periphery of cities or urban areas (Available at:
http://www.treasury.gov.za/bo/ndpdivisions//)
population. Social vulnerability to natural disasters is common in many developing countries due to their less adaptive capacity. It affects explicitly vulnerable groups, including children, elderly, and local women, especially local women from marginal classes. Addressing the vulnerability of these groups requires first exploring and understanding the underlying factors behind their experiences of vulnerability. The current study explores the social aspects of vulnerability experienced by local Black African women to impacts of flood disaster in the context of eThekwini municipality.
Furthermore, Fussel (2007) explains that vulnerability can be viewed from two perspectives:
vulnerability as an endpoint and vulnerability as a starting point. Quite similarly, O’Brien et al (2007, p.76) use the terms 'outcome vulnerability' and 'context vulnerability' to describe the two interpretations given by Fussel (2007). The author’s explanation implies that ‘vulnerability as a starting point’ is viewed in a more descriptive approach. It entails the direct impact that an individual, community, regions, or group of people experience as a result of an environmental hazard. O’Brien et al (2007, p.76) define vulnerability as a starting point or outcome of vulnerability using the term ‘linear vulnerability’. Linear vulnerability arises from projected impacts of climate change on a particular exposure unit. The exposure unit can be biophysical or social. The impacts of a linear vulnerability are those outcomes that are attributed to climate change. Natural scientists view vulnerability more as a ‘starting point’ by asking descriptive questions such as, “what are the impacts of a climate hazard on a certain population”?
On the other hand, the framing of vulnerability as an endpoint seems to take a normative or explanatory approach. Such an approach seeks to uncover what makes a specific population or group more vulnerable than others. Analysis from such an approach seeks to uncover the socio- economic or socio-political factors that increases the vulnerability of a specific group over another. For instance, from an end-point interpretation of vulnerability, one can ask what makes Black African women in a given locality more vulnerable than their White counterparts in the same locality, despite sharing the same geographical location and the same government. The figure below illustrates two interpretations of vulnerability.
Figure 1: Framework depicting two interpretations of vulnerability to climate change impacts…
Source: O’Brien et al (2007, p.75)
The above illustration shows that outcome vulnerability has a linear dimension, meaning that climate change leads to a disaster that exposes a particular unit to some adverse conditions, resulting in vulnerability. Contextual vulnerability, on the other hand, is multidimensional, meaning that a web of contextual (political, institutional, economic, and social) conditions determines the extent or level of vulnerability to which people or a group of people experience the negative impact of climate variability and environmental disaster. Though studies seem to attribute the two interpretations distinctively to two different scientific domains (O’Brien et al 2007; Fussel, 2007), it could also be enriching to combine the two interpretations in an analysis of a study. For instance, one study can explore the experiences of a particular group or class of people to a specific environmental hazard, and then investigate or analyse the socio-political or socio-economic factors that shape or influence those experiences.
Besides, there is a cross-related interaction between the biophysical outcome of people's exposure to climate variability and the context or the extent of the vulnerability they experience. Put differently, contextual conditions (socio-political or socioeconomic), determines the extent of vulnerability. It also shows that multiple factors influence the vulnerability of a group of people. Vulnerability can, therefore, not be exhaustively analysed using a single interpretation. Addressing end-point vulnerability entails developing ways of
adapting to future disaster occurrences, while addressing starting-point vulnerability entails confronting issues of equity and justice in climate change adaptation planning and implementation (O'Brien et al 2007, p.76). An integrative perspective or approach to vulnerability provides vital information to policymakers. Such an approach helps policymakers look holistically into the factors that make a particular group of people more vulnerable (to climate disasters) than others.
An assessment of the vulnerability of a population to climate impacts should take into consideration the multifactorial causality of vulnerability, in a specific place, at a specific period. This further suggests that the degree of vulnerability experienced could also be time dependent. Linking the pattern of the vulnerability of a specific group of people over a period with the intricacy of the pattern of institutional change can also reveal how institutional practices can contribute to vulnerability. The vulnerability may not be physically measurable with the use of any material instrument but describing the condition or situation of a people through a certain number of elements serve as useful indicators.