Making space for social inclusion in conceptualising climate change vulnerability

Abstract

Impacts from climate change pose a raft of challenges for societies, governments and policy-makers internationally. The anticipated changes are well documented, including rising sea levels, increased floods and other extreme weather conditions. Much research and policy emphasis has focused on technical and economic aspects. Less debated are questions about different communities' vulnerabilities, inequitable distributional impacts, social justice issues and how vulnerability links to social inclusion/exclusion. This paper explores a case study mapping social exclusion and vulnerability in Brisbane, Queensland, which found that while communities can be vulnerable through physical aspects of an area when social dimensions are added to the equation it amplifies or exacerbates the scale of vulnerability. The findings also suggest that in developing research agendas and policy debates around climate change, there could be benefits from interlinking the currently separate areas of work on social vulnerability to extreme weather events, to forms and processes of social inclusion/exclusion.

Keywords:

• climate change
• social inclusion
• social exclusion
• climate change vulnerability
• community vulnerability

Notes

1. As expressions of “natural events”, “natural disasters” and “forces of nature” do not honour the socially constructed approach that we ascribe to (i.e. vulnerability determine impacts of extreme events), they are placed in inverted comments to note this. From this perspective, the so-called “natural” disasters are not natural at all or unique in themselves, but social processes triggered as a result of manifestation of an extreme event of natural, socio-natural or man-made origins, which find favourable conditions of vulnerability (favourable to a negative impact) in a population and its infrastructure (Kelman 2010).

2. Both the work by Lanflois and Kitchen (2001) and Baum (2004, 2012) used a similar set of indicators to develop the index of social deprivation. As such, the individual components that made up the overall social deprivation or social exclusion index were similar.

3. The data for the percentage of impervious surfaces and the thermal profile were initially measured at 10 and 60 metre grids and were up-scaled to suburb level spatial unit.

4. A full description of this approach can be seen in the paper by Cutter and Finch (2008) and in the work by Anselin (1995).