Targeting an Environmental Assessment Theme: Human Vulnerability Due to Environmental Change

This document synthesizes a training module that positions human vulnerability to environmental change as a policy-relevant theme in African integrated environmental assessment. It outlines learning goals—clarifying vulnerability concepts, applying a driver–state–response analytical frame, and building community-derived indicators—while stressing bidirectional links among environmental change, human well-being, and societal response. It characterizes highly vulnerable communities by limited choices, adaptive capacity, voice, and control, and proposes indicator domains spanning health, economic losses, poverty, food security, and resource-driven conflict. Two cases illustrate application: Darfur, where degradation and disrupted migration patterns intensify intergroup conflict, and eastern Morocco, where cooperative, demand-led rangeland and livestock programs reduced pastoral vulnerability.