Exposure to Climate Change
Nisar Kannangara, Kalaiarasi Kandhan Sagunthala | 1 June 2025
When the experience of climate change was regarded as a relational process, the dynamics in the variation gained prominence. The key determinants of climate risk were seen to involve exposure, vulnerability, and hazard. All three of these concepts looked at the adverse impacts of climate change on human systems as well as ecosystems. Where vulnerability looked into the susceptibility to be adversely affected by climate change, exposure denoted the spatial element, delving into the presence of people, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the settings which could be adversely affected and while the hazard deals with the possibilities in the occurrence of climate events or their long-term trends. Vulnerability assessment is one of the key tools used in planning climate change adaptation strategies all over the world. The Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments (CCVAs) focused on identifying the risks from the direct and indirect climate change impacts. These assessments also included the concepts of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. But later the concept of exposure was delinked from vulnerability and became a pre-requisite to understanding vulnerability. Climate change adaptation planning was based on the internal processes affected by the external physical impacts, so the concept of exposure came forth as the means to study the physical impacts of climate change.

