Training Manual on the Integrated Vulnerability Assessment Methodology

Climate change poses a significant and multi-faceted challenge for the Arab region. Converging with population growth, urbanisation and increasing demands on natural resources, climate change is contributing to the depletion and degradation of water and soil resources and putting further pressure on agricultural zones and biodiversity. A higher frequency and intensity of floods, droughts and extreme weather events is also being witnessed, which is affecting the built environment as well as natural ecosystems. Climate change thus threatens the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Arab region and their efforts to achieve sustainable development.

In the Arab Declaration on Climate Change, Arab States calls for the development and dissemination of climate change assessment methodologies and tools that assess the impacts of climate change to improve planning for adaptation and reduce vulnerability to climate change in the Arab region.2 This led to the formulation and launching of the United Nations-League of Arab States Regional Initiative for the Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources and Socio-Economic Vulnerability in the Arab Region (RICCAR) in 2009.

Based on the methodology developed to conduct the RICCAR integrated vulnerability assessment, this training manual provides a practical step-by-step guidance for understanding the various components of preparing a vulnerability assessment through the use of regional climate modelling and regional hydrological modelling outputs, as well as geospatial and statistical tools. It includes a comprehensive description of the integrated vulnerability assessment methodology, followed by a detailed technical guidance on implementing the methodology in GIS and on remote sensing image classification.

Funding for this manual was provided by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the Adaptation to Climate Change in the Water Sector in the MENA Region (ACCWaM) programme implemented by GIZ. Technical support for the preparation of this manual was provided by adelphi and EURAC Research.