Introduction

HARRY DÍAZ; DAVID SAUCHYN ; MUSSETTA PAULA

VULNERABILITY STUDIES IN THE AMERICAS: EXTREME WEATHER AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Cambridge University Scholars

Año: 2020; p. 1 - 22

This book deals with the impacts of present and future extreme climate conditions on the rural regions of five countries in the Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and Colombia. It presents and discusses the results of the Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Extremes in the Americas (VACEA) project, a collaborative, comparative and interdisciplinary investigation of vulnerable rural agricultural communities in the five countries. The research team was comprised of investigators and research assistants from different disciplines: Geography, Geology, Engineering, Agronomy, Sociology, Law, Economics, and Anthropology.The VACEA project took place between 2011 and 2016. Its main goal was ?to improve the understanding of the vulnerability of rural agricultural and indigenous communities to shifts in climate variability and to the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events, and to engage governance institutions in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia in enhancing their adaptive capacity to reduce rural community vulnerability.? Thus, it addressed the consequences of global climate change for both regional climate variability and extremes and the associated vulnerabilities and adaptive strategies of rural communities. The project was focused on rural populations that are highly vulnerable, either because their lives take place on the social and economic margins of society or because the nature of their livelihoods makes them highly exposed and sensitive to climate variability and extremes.