Indicators to Assess Community-Level Social Vulnerability to Climate Change: an Addendum to SOCMON and Sem-Pasifika Regional Socioeconomic Monitoring Guidelines

The purpose of this document is to provide a minimum set of socioeconomic indicators related to climate change. These can be included in a socioeconomic assessment of any site for which climate change impacts are an important issue. The resulting information can then inform coastal management needs and adaptive management. This document is being added to regional socioeconomic monitoring guidelines produced by the Global Socioeconomic Monitoring Initiative for Coastal Management (SocMon)1 and its Pacific counterpart, SEM?Pasifika, which aim to improve site management of coastal and marine areas by providing simple, user?friendly guidelines on how to conduct a socioeconomic assessment. Such assessments help coastal managers incorporate community views into adaptive management of marine resources. It has become evident over the last few years that many coastal and island sites are experiencing more climate?related events and impacts, which add stress to coastal and marine resources as well as the communities whose way of life is intimately connected with them. Coastal managers and conservation practitioners worldwide are beginning to get involved in efforts to understand and address critical climate?related issues, and there has been a growing need for indicators to help understand a community’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity to changing climate. This addendum is therefore intended to add specific indicators for understanding social vulnerability and social adaptive capacity as it relates to climate change. The intended audience is project managers, NGO staff, and community members who are interested and able to conduct a socioeconomic assessment to help understand a community’s vulnerability to changing climate, and how it might plan to adapt.