MAINSTREAMING CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION
Slide 7
Task - Identify
• What hazards affect your community?
• How often are they affected and for how
long?
• Do any of the hazards have underlying causes?
• Are the hazards predictable, rapid or slow
onset, seasonal?
• Who is affected and how?
• Identify the extent and severity of the effects.
Slide 10
2012
External factors contributing to
vulnerability
• Are there institutions or policies that
contribute to vulnerability?
There are often policies or actions remote from
the communities, over which they have little
control, but which contribute to their
vulnerability.
Slide 8
Example of hazard assessment
Hazard
History
Frequency / duration
Location
Causes
Warning signs
Who / what is affected & how
How many people affected
Severity / ability to recover
Flood
Periodically in living memory, severe flooding becoming more frequent
Annually, 3 – 6 months from July to November
Plain and low-lying areas
Natural rainfall patterns, exacerbated by climate change.
1) Farmers in low lying areas, land flooded, crops destroyed, land eroded
2) Water supply is contaminated, higher incidence of illness, time required to
collect clean water
1) 10% of population (poorest)
2) 90% of population (rich and poor)
Serious in some years. Lately erratic and very unpredictable. Crops destroyed.
Houses destroyed. Livelihoods threatened. Food insecurity. Recovery for farmers
is difficult and slow.
Slide 11
Task 3. Vulnerability analysis
Financial assets
Natural assets
Physical assets
Human assets
Social assets
Vulnerable Assets
What are the impacts during or
after the hazard (short/long
term)?
Livelihood conditions /
characteristics
What characteristics of peoples
livelihoods make those assets
vulnerable?
Policies & institutions (local,
regional, national)
Which policies or institutions
(or lack of) contribute to the
vulnerable conditions? How?
Slide 9
Assessment of livelihood vulnerability
The vulnerability assessment aims to identify
• who is at risk and how?
• which assets are at risk?
• why are they at risk?
This involves detailed discussion with particular
groups of vulnerable people identified in the
community profiling and hazard analysis.
Many aspects of vulnerability are hazard specific
Slide 12
Capacity assessment
• Capacity relates to the full range assets that enhance
people’s ability to reduce their vulnerability, i.e. which
enable them to cope with, withstand, prevent, prepare
for or recover from the impact of a hazard.
• The livelihoods capacity assessment identifies the
existing strengths within the community (or group)
based on the assets they have available to them or can
mobilise.
• Assets include financial, natural, physical, human and
social
• They include skills, knowledge, organisations and
attitude as well as physical and natural resources.
A Training Manual on Use of Climate Information and Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment for
Agricultural Extension Staff in Zimbabwe
Page 132