Review of Climate change and globalization in the Arctic: an integrated approach to vulnerability assessment, by E. Carina H. Keskitalo

Abstract

In the past decade, much of the research on global environmental change has adopted a new conceptual and methodological framing: vulnerability. This framing draws on decades of prior research—from multiple disciplinary perspectives and traditions—on how people produce, and respond to, conditions in their biophysical environments. The novelty in this framing is the recognition of the need to integrate existing ideas and methods, so as to paint a more holistic picture of the complex problems under study. Naturally, these conceptual (e.g., Kelly & Adger 2000; McCarthy et al. 2001; Turner et al. 2003) and methodological (e.g., O’Brien & Leichenko 2000; Luers et al. 2003; Schröter et al. 2005; Polsky et al. 2007) developments have outpaced the production of empirical vulnerability assessments that employ/operationalize these framings.