Pinning down social vulnerability in Sindh Province, Pakistan: from narratives to numbers, and back again.

Daanish Mustafa,Meher Noshirwani,Iffat Idris,Giovanna Gioli,Nadeem Ahmed,Manzoor Memon

doi:10.1111/disa.12315

Daanish Mustafa, Meher Noshirwani + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12315

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Abstract

This paper reflects critically on the results of a vulnerability assessment process at the household and community scale using a quantitative vulnerabilities and capacities index. It validates a methodology for a social vulnerability assessment at the local scale in 62 villages across four agro‐ecological/livelihood zones in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The study finds that the move from vulnerability narratives to numbers improves the comparability and communicational strength of the concept. The depth and nuance of vulnerability, however, can be realised only by a return to narrative. Caution is needed, therefore: the index can be used in conjunction with qualitative assessments, but not instead of them. More substantively, the results show that vulnerability is more a function of historico‐political economic factors and cultural ethos than any biophysical changes wrought by climate. The emerging gendered vulnerability picture revealed extremes of poverty and a lack of capacity to cope with contemporary environmental and social stresses.

Highlights

Vulnerability is a foundational concept within the hazards tradition and its more current offshoot fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (Bassett and Fogelman, 2013)
The results show that vulnerability is more a function of historico-political economic factors and cultural ethos than any biophysical changes wrought by climate
Ambivalence about the drivers and the importance of social vulnerability to climate change may be a function of uncertainty about how to measure it and to incorporate it better in policy

Summary

Introduction

Vulnerability is a foundational concept within the hazards tradition and its more current offshoot fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (Bassett and Fogelman, 2013). The quantitative vulnerability index calculations, along with the qualitative information, draw attention to the attitudinal institutional and material drivers of vulnerability Those drivers, as will be demonstrated by the vulnerability assessment results, are embedded in the political economic context of Pakistan, and are very loosely related to the biophysical risks that emerge from climate change. The index identifies 12 drivers of vulnerability, which are divided into three categories, following Anderson and Woodrow (1989): material (education, exposure to hazard, individual assets, and livelihoods); institutional (earning members in a household and membership of a disadvantaged minority, employment and minority status, extra-local kinship ties, infrastructure, social networks, and warning system); and attitudinal (empowerment and knowledge). Lower the score by ‘1’ for each instance of hazard mitigation, such as the building of a house on higher plinth for floods

Institutional vulnerability

Attitudinal vulnerability

Highest possible vulnerability and capacity score

Results