International seminar on demographic differential vulnerability to natural disasters in the context of climate change adaptation

The main purpose of this seminar is to bring the expertise of the international demographic community with respect to studying demographic and socio-economic differentials to the benefit of the international risk, vulnerability and climate change community. Recently, the climate science community has recognized the importance of including socio-economic scenarios in climate change models as a key element for an integrated perspe ctive on mitigation, adaptation and residual climate impacts. This highlights how demography could contribute to the understanding of the relationships between population dynamics (not only by age and sex but also by educational attainment and place of residence) and climate change outcomes. The international policy community has recently pledged to spend $US 100 billion per year starting in 2020 for adaptation to climate change, but it is not yet clear for what activities this money will be spent. Given that the impacts of climate change are not distributed evenly across social groups, communities and countries, it is important to identify these demographic differentials for strategies to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity.

Accordingly, this seminar primarily aims to bring together demographers and other social scientists who are working on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change so we can take stock of what scientific progress has been made to date, share and consolidate our understanding of on-going research, strengthen and expand professional networks, and discuss priorities for future research and collaboration. This seminar is also the concluding meeting of an ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Investigator Grant awarded to Wolfgang Lutz 2008 on the topic “Forecasting societies’ adaptive capacity to climate change.”