Justice and Vulnerability to Climate Change

Date: 10 May 2011
Speaker(s): John O'Neill
Venue: University of Leeds

CCCEP summer public lecture (Leeds)

This talk considered the different dimensions of vulnerability and their role in the measurement of climate disadvantage.

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Abstract of lecture

What metrics should be used to capture the distribution of the impacts of climate change on the well-being of different individuals and groups?

One obvious answer to that question might be the probability and degree of exposure to hazards such as flood and heat wave. However, there are good reasons to think that the metrics of probability and severity of exposure are on their own inadequate.

What matters is not only the likelihood and severity of exposure to the hazard but also the differential impacts of the event on wellbeing.

Vulnerability is a matter of how the external event converts into a welfare outcome. How exposure converts into wellbeing will depend on a variety of personal, environmental and social factors.

This lecture considered the different dimensions of vulnerability and their role in the measurement of climate disadvantage.

Biography of John O’Neill

John is Hallsworth Professor of Political Economy at Manchester University and co-director of the Political Economy Institute.

John has written widely on philosophy, political economy and environmental policy. His books include Markets, Deliberation and Environment (Routledge, 2007), The Market: Ethics, knowledge and politics (Routledge, 1998) and Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human well-being and the natural world (Routledge, 1993). He is co-author of Environmental Values (Routledge, 2008) with Alan Holland and Andrew Light. He is co-editor, with Tim Hayward, of Justice, Property and the Environment: Social and legal perspectives (Ashgate, 1997), and, with Ian Bateman and Kerry Turner, of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (Edward Elgar, 2001).