A Global Perspective on the Vulnerability of Societies to the Impacts of Climate Change

Where in the world does it matter most if climate change has negative impacts on ocean resources?  A simple question with an only slightly more complicated answer:  the countries with most to be concerned about are those where climatic conditions are likely to change the most (‘hotspots of change’) AND where fisheries and other ocean resources make the largest overall contribution to the local and national economy and society.  Countries that have small and fragile economies and a host of other basic needs for their development are least likely to have the capacity to adapt to the combined effects of increasing climate variability, declining productivity, thermal stress on sensitive marine biodiversity, increased frequency of harmful algal blooms, coral bleaching, increased storm intensity and rising sea levels, to name just some of the predicted effects of climate change.  If you add low adaptive capacity to the high potential impact of climate change, you can identify the most vulnerable societies and economies.  In the last eighteen months, researchers have pulled together the climate, biological, social and economic data to locate the most vulnerable nations and coastal populations. Many of them are already among the world’s poorest nations and the most climate risk-exposed people.  Among these are the countries of the Asian mega-deltas of the Mekong and the Ganges rivers - Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh - the small-island developing states of the Pacific, and the coastal countries of sub-Saharan Africa.  Coastal populations in vulnerable developing countries are faced with a difficult period of adjustment in where they live, how they earn a living, and what they will eat to stay healthy.  They, and their governments, will require support from the Global Adaptation Fund pledged at the 2009 Copenhagen meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate change.