The intensity, frequency, duration, and spatial extent of weather and climate extremes are projected to experience changes . Decision-makers need to be able to access reliable science-based information to evaluate adaptive opportunities for various human populations . Stakeholders are searching for efficient options that would reduce vulnerability or eliminate impacts, especially in highly climate-dependent economic sectors such as agriculture. Rural economies and their livelihoods predominantly depend on agriculture. A significant fraction of the world’s population, as large as 3.3 billion people, lives in rural areas, with 90% from developing countries. Rural environments, predominantly in developing countries, are particularly vulnerable to climate changes because their economies are highly dependent on natural resources, unlike their urban counterparts . Furthermore, these populations live with higher levels of poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, exposing them to a higher level of vulnerability to weather-related and climate-sensitive events. It is vital to address both weather-related disaster effects and vulnerabilities to aid the creation of adaptation opportunities . Interest in the connections between biophysical and social components of natural hazards started in 1942 with Gilbert White, who stated that floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of man . Since then, researchers have focused on one of two approaches: a focus on the hazards and a focus on understanding vulnerability that encompasses economic, demographic, and social factors,microgreen flood table regardless of the hazard . The concept of vulnerability is a powerful analytical tool for “guiding normative analysis of actions to enhance well-being through reduction of risk” . Vulnerability to climate change and variability is unequally distributed across physical and cultural spaces and is often exacerbated by pre-existing inequalities . Such pre-existing conditions affect the ability of society to prepare and recover from weather events .

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their latest assessment takes a contextual approach, in which vulnerability is not the result of climate variability and/or change but rather is a pre-existing condition that is exacerbated by such changes. This framework brings the IPCC closer to the disaster risk reduction community and introduces approaches where the focus is on understanding those pre-existing vulnerabilities . In a constantly changing world, it’s imperative to identify and assess pre-existing vulnerabilities. Spatial vulnerability assessments are often used as a synonym for vulnerability assessments in general, in part due to an understanding that vulnerability and its components possess high degrees of spatial and temporal heterogeneity . An array of problems commonly emerges in spatial vulnerability assessments, mainly due to the limitation of available data and various methodological issues . Vulnerability assessments are frequently mapped using variables that are spatially aggregated. However, this standard approach is highly problematic, insofar as we don’t know the exact scale, spatial configuration, and boundary of the geographical area that exerts meaningful influence on the phenomenon under study . Choices of geographical boundaries are frequently determined by data availability rather than by thesystem’s dynamics . We should be able to readily aggregate and disaggregate data used in vulnerability assessments from the household to the regional level , in order to explore what is the appropriate analysis scale for these data . Access to the disaggregated data, rarely available, is imperative to determine the actual influence of the aggregated data as the analysis scale changes . More detailed data could be found in household surveys; however, their spatial coverage is limited. Such surveys are commonly collected to be nationally representative; consequently, their sampling frames may not allow for finer resolution . Some vulnerability assessments combine different household surveys dataset in order to obtain a rich variety of population attributes. When data at the household level is not available, researchers use other datasets. Census data is another source available for performing vulnerability assessments and includes microdata that gives rich information for large areas with boundaries at a larger geographical scale.

Nonetheless, census microdata is uncommon for developing countries and for specific climate-dependent sectors. Frequently, vulnerability assessments at larger analysis scales cannot be performed due to the limited availability of disaggregated data. Even if the data were available, their structure and pattern are not always well understood and will not always directly improve the assessment. This highlights the key question of whether these assessments and maps satisfy their intended purpose. The most common approach to quantifying vulnerability is to create multivariate indices based on various components and proxy measures. Creating composite indices is an empirical approach that has received significant attention, due to its potential for policy use . Such indices allow areas of extremely high or low pre-existing vulnerability to emerge when the indices are mapped . However, vulnerable populations could remain unnoticed if results are misinterpreted, misrepresented, or overstated. A focus only on household assets presents an incomplete picture of vulnerability to hazards; it leaves gaps in identifying where in the system we could intervene. Assessments that involve asset-based methods are helpful in identifying the available resources that can aid in adapting and coping with changes in the environment. However, they mask processes and functions that are helpful for the stakeholder at the local level. Furthermore, assessments that are solely based on assets and quantitative methods are commonly criticized because they typically fail to capture local conditions that influence adaptation, as well as spatial and social variation in vulnerability . Ethnographic research offers an excellent opportunity to understand the external constraints that may be placed on assets . Besides studying the availability of assets that an individual possesses, it is important to examine structural factors and uncertainty that individuals deal with . The concept of vulnerability used in this dissertation is what we know as social vulnerability or pre-existing vulnerability, which aims to understand pre-existing conditions in order to answer who is vulnerable and why.

According to the chapter on rural areas from the latest IPCC assessment, more research is needed on identifying who is most vulnerable. Specifically, attention is needed to address, “research on methodological questions such as conceptualizations of vulnerability, assessment tools, spatial scales for analysis, and the relations between short-term support for adaptation,seedling grow rack policy contexts and development trajectories, and long-term resilience or vulnerability” . This dissertation aims to enhance our understanding of the assessments tools and analysis scales that aid in the identification of the most vulnerable segments of the population.  Farmers from the Peruvian department of Puno are examined as a case study, using a mix-method approach. The qualitative portion of the dissertation involves fieldwork data collected from January 2016 to March 2017. The quantitative portion of the study uses indicators from the latest agriculture census with information for over 200,000 farmers who are heads of their farms. Vulnerability is a dynamic concept produced by multiple stressors and operating simultaneously at different scales . Some use the cognomen “Babylonian Confusion” when attempting to specifically define vulnerability, in recognition that its meaning varies across and within disciplines. The concept of vulnerability, in the scientific community, has its roots in geography, food security, and the natural hazards literature. The concept of vulnerability involves two independent dimensions: scale and disciplinary domain. With respect to scale or scope, vulnerability involves internal and external factors influencing the system . Internal factors are endogenous to the system and can be controlled by the individuals; external factors are outside the scope of the vulnerability assessment and are not easily controlled by the individual . With respect to disciplinary domain, vulnerability is divided into biophysical and socioeconomic factors that could affect the system. Biophysical factors are those usually studied by physical and life sciences; socioeconomic factors are studied in social sciences and humanities . The two dimensions can be combined to produce different meanings: internal socioeconomic factors relate to an individual’s response capacity , internal biophysical factors relate to a system’s sensitivity ; external socioeconomic factors relate to social factors exogenous to the system ; and external biophysical factors relate to hazards to which people are exposed . For many decades, vulnerability research focused on the physical and technical causes of events. Subsequently, it evolved to incorporate a population’s capacity to withstand such events and respond to them. Assessing vulnerability gained political importance when it was no longer just an academic exercise but necessary for policy making . The conceptualization and operationalization of vulnerability was diverse as seen by various research traditions. The diverse traditions generated multiple approaches: risk-hazard approach, political economy approach, pressure-and-release approach, and hazard-of-place approach. The risk-hazard approach conceptualizes vulnerability as how much damage results from a hazard of particular severity .

This approach is suitable for evaluating the risk of the household unit based on its exposure to a specific hazard of a certain type and magnitude . The risk-hazard approach attributes vulnerability to being in the wrong place at the wrong time or to exposure to hazards . According to this framework, a hazard event is rare, known, and stationary . Risk-hazard approaches are popular in assessments performed by engineers and economists. Vulnerability, in this approach, is not explanatory but focuses on describing vulnerability in relation to physical systems . According to the risk-hazard framework, vulnerability is characterized as internal biophysical vulnerability. This denotation corresponds to the sensitivity of the system and to the intervening conditions of danger . In other words, risk-hazard approaches classify the endogenous factors that relate to system properties investigated by physical scientists. However, critics of this approach emphasize the limitations of focusing only on the natural hazard with respect to understanding impacts and the systems’ responses . Moreover, the approach has ignored the anthropological literature on human environment relations . Vulnerability conceptualization has moved from merely measuring impacts of hazards to understanding hazard linkages with human conditions . The political economy approach focusses on answering who is vulnerable and why. These approaches are popular among researchers interested in poverty and development. They focus on “the state of individuals, groups or communities in terms of their ability to cope with and adapt to any external stress placed on their livelihoods and well-being” . Furthermore, they also consider “the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard” . Building from the shortfalls found in the risk-hazard approach, Blaikie et al. developed the Pressure-and-Release model, using the political economy framework.The PAR model recognizes that the intersection of two conditions are needed to create a disaster: physical exposure to a hazard and existing vulnerabilities . According to the model, risk to people that arises from combining their vulnerability with the severity of a hazard could be decreased by reducing the vulnerabilities. Determinants of vulnerability in the PAR model are organized into three groups: Root causes of the lack of access to resources and power structures; dynamic pressures including the lack of assets; and unsafe conditions such as fragile physical environments and fragile local economies . Some researchers have critiqued the model because it “fails to provide a systematic view of the mechanisms and processes of vulnerability” . Others emphasize that the PAR model does not offer an analysis of interactions between the environment and society, or an analysis at the point at which disaster begins to present itself . Another approach to vulnerability is given by the hazard-of-place model. This conceptualization was presented by Cutter as an integrated and geographically centered approach. It combines the likelihood of a hazard event with measures of factors that reduce risk and impacts. Such a combination is filtered through an analysis of the geographic context and the social fabric of the population . This method explicitly focusses on geographic location to create a typology for regional risk. The leading international group for assessing climate change and its effects is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . This body provides clear and complete scientific views on the current state of climate change research and is divided into three working groups: Working Group I that relates to physical science; Working Group II which relates to impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation; and Working Group III that relates to mitigation efforts. This dissertation focuses directly on the areas of concern to the IPCC Working Group II .