Climate change vulnerability assessment is a rapidly developing field. However, despite the fact that such major trends as globalization and the changing characteristics of the political and economic governance systems are crucial in shaping a community‘s capacity to adapt to climate change, these trends are seldom included in assessments. This book addresses this shortcoming by developing a framework for qualitative vulnerability assessment inmultiple impact studies (of climate change and globalization) and applying this framework to several cases of renewable natural resource use.
The book draws upon case studies of forestry and fishing - two of the largest sectors that rely on renewable natural resources - and reindeer herding in the European North. The study represents a bottom-up view, originating with the stakeholders themselves, of the degree to which stakeholders find adaptation to climate change possible and how they evaluate it in relation to their other concerns, notably economic and political ones. Moreover, the approach and research results include features that could be broadly generalized to other geographic areas or sectors characterized by renewable natural resource use.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Vulnerability Assessment in the Context of Multiple Levels and Impacts * Structuring the Conceptions of Change * A Methodology for Vulnerability Assessment * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Forest Industry Stakeholders in Northern Sweden and Finland * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Reindeer Herding Stakeholders in Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Fishing Stakeholders in Northernmost Norway * Conclusion * Index
About the Author :
E. Carina H. Keskitalo is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ume University, Sweden, and a researcher in national and international projects on adaptation to climate change.
Review :
'Recommended.' – Choice
'[A]n important contribution to the literature on how socio-ecological systems experience and manage change ... [t]he book should appeal to a wide variety of scholars interested in the human dimensions of climatic and environmental changes.' – Arctic Journal
'A valuable contribution to the literature on the human dimensions of global environmental change. Scholars, graduate students and practitioners will benefit from reading and referencing it.' – Polar Research
'This volume provides a detailed and thorough examination of vulnerability and adaptation in the northern European Arctic, and serves as a useful reference for stakeholder views in the forestry, fishing, and reindeer herding sectors.' – Lilian Alessa and Andrew Kliskey, University of Alaska Anchorage, The Journal of Polar Record
'Standing out from other climate change vulnerability assessments that do not also include the effects of multiple governance levels (i.e. political and economic globalization) on adaptive capacity to climate change, the book presents a detailed and complex insight into the vulnerabilities of the studied sectors. Further, Keskitalo’s examination of stakeholder adaptive capacity in the European Arctic brings new insight and perspective to a mostly North American body of Arctic research.' – Rebeka Ryvola and Elena von Sperber, Carbon & Climate Law Review.
