Anticipatory Adaptation Planning: An Inherent Vulnerability Approach to Climate Change and Disaster Resilience

Mitigation measures for Climate Change and disaster risk impacts cannot be impeccable, thus adaptation actions are imperative for building societal resilience to unforeseen and unavoidable impacts. In the present era of extreme events, which is the causal agent of enormous toll on sustainable humanitarian and development planning, a shift from reactive to more active anticipatory planning is essential to foster resilience within communities. Although the need of anticipatory actions is highlighted in several global agreements, however, the dominant conceptualization of adaptation within policy circles at regional and local levels remains overly simplistic, with limited attention to its links with the concept of anticipation. Since, assessments of vulnerability are required to develop adaptation planning, in this article we argue the need of inherent vulnerability approaches for anticipatory adaptation planning for responding to the impacts of Climate Change and climate-induced disasters. Usage of contextual inherent vulnerability approach extends the anticipatory adaptation planning to not only anticipating future risk through current scenarios, but also to identify locations that will be more acutely affected as a result of existing structural vulnerabilities. We propose an inherent vulnerability framework based on the intrinsic social and biophysical to understand the spatial dynamics of vulnerability for the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand to strengthen adaptations response and build resilience to future climatic and disaster risks.