Increasing Trust in Climate Vulnerability Projections

Abstract

AbstractProjecting future trends is emerging as a key focus of community‐based climate vulnerability assessments. In these mostly qualitative studies, understanding of current vulnerability processes is used as a basis for identifying who and what are vulnerable to future changes, where, and why, and characterizing the key drivers of vulnerability and how they might change. Few, if any, of these studies engage with approaches for validating findings, reflecting the difficulties of validating mostly qualitative projections of highly uncertain futures, absence of directly measurable vulnerability outcomes, and lack of data on vulnerability drivers. Given the challenges of projecting future trends, this absence undermines trust in such work and limits opportunities to learn. This paper illustrates, with examples, how validation can be incorporated into the study design of community‐based climate vulnerability assessments through: (a) examination of retrospective projections to assess projection skill, (b) evaluation of projections made for future time periods which have since passed for consistency with what actually happened, (c) comparison of projections with empirical research that attempts to understand and constrain the effects of climate change using observed effects of weather variation, and (d) incorporation of demonstrated “best practices” into projection development, such as acknowledgment of areas of uncertainty, integration of diverse viewpoints, and utilization of multiple sources of information.