Guidance on integrating ecosystem considerations into climate change vulnerability and impact assessment to inform ecosystem-based adaptation

This guidance provides information and advice on how to integrate consideration of ecosystems and their services into a climate change Vulnerability and Impact Assessment (VIA). VIAs are conducted to inform the objectives, focus and content of adaptation interventions and strategies, and many approaches, tools and methods now exist to guide this process. However, despite this plethora of guidance, there are significant challenges to fully capturing the complexity of social-ecological systems and their vulnerabilities in VIAs.

This guidance addresses these challenges and recognizes the importance of designing assessments of social vulnerability to climate change so that they take account of potential changes in the supply of and demand for ecosystem services that support livelihoods, the well-being of societies and their adaptation strategies. 

The document takes the reader through steps that will support the integration of ecosystem considerations into holistic VIAs, describing key questions to be answered, outlining the process of carrying out the steps, identifying the outputs of each step and referring to other useful materials. It also uses a fictional case study to illustrate the type of information that might be collected at each step. The authors have designed these steps to correspond with the types of steps that are commonly included in vulnerability assessment guidance, and may be thought of as part of an iterative rather than a linear process.