Diversifying to cope with Environmental Change

Saskia Werners & Martina Donaldson

Abstract: There is confusion regarding the notion of “vulnerability” and “adaptive capacity” in the climate change community. Recent research has identified a need for formalisation, which would support accurate communication and the elimination of misunderstandings that result from the use of ambiguous terminology. Moreover, a formal framework is a prerequisite for computational approaches to its assessment. This paper presents an attempt at extending a formal framework from vulnerability science with measures from information theory. We see vulnerability as a relative concept, in the sense that accurate statements about vulnerability are possible only if one clearly specifies (i) the agent that is vulnerable, (ii) the environment to which it is vulnerable and (iii) the preference criteria to evaluate the outcome of the interaction between the entity and the stimulus. Adaptive capacity and vulnerability are illustrated using measures from information theory. We relate the resulting framework to a simple case and an agent based model of adaptation. We assess the information required by agents to take full advantage of the theoretical benefits of diversification and bet hedging in a changing environment.

Keywords: vulnerability, adaptive capacity, climate change, formalisation, information theory.