Climate Vulnerability, Community Resilience, and Social Justice: A Multilevel Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66132/ss259Keywords:
Climate adaptation, Climate vulnerability, Community resilience, Environmental justice, Gender inequality, Social equity, Vulnerability indicesAbstract
Climate change is an environmental, socio-economic and ethical issue that exacerbates inequality in terms of income, gender, ethnicity and geography. People's vulnerability to climate hazards depends on exposure, adaptive capacity, and institutional support. This paper presents a mixed-methods approach to a multilevel analysis of climate vulnerability, social justice, and climate resilience, incorporating global vulnerability indices, community-based case studies, and qualitative literature. The data presented by the IPCC, the World Bank, the UNDP and ND-GAIN are combined with field cases from Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Australia. The results show that almost 3.3–3.6 billion people are in very climate-vulnerable situations, and that mortality rates from floods, droughts, and storms in vulnerable regions are 15 times higher than in low-risk regions. SIDST contributes just 0.2% of the global emissions but experiences disproportionate damage. Another 158 million women and girls will also be pushed into poverty by 2050 due to climate change. Community-based adaptation, such as Anticipatory Evacuation, Agro-ecological learning and Urban heat resilience programs, have been shown to have an important impact on climate risks and social resilience in case studies.
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