A systematic approach to assess human wellbeing demonstrated for impacts of climate change : Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems

摘要

Climate change impacts will affect manyimportant societal sectors, with potential negativeconsequences for human well-being and livelihoods,however an integrated and systematic measure to assessthe state of livelihood conditions in this context is notavailable. At the same time, human livelihoods and wellbeingare an important part of (social) sustainability.Yet, aspects of human needs and well-being withinassessments of sustainability are criticised for beingarbitrary and incomplete. This paper presents a systematicapproach to assess Adequate Human livelihoodconditions for wEll-being And Development (AHEAD) ona regional to global scale. Based on an interdisciplinaryliterature review, we first select a consistent set ofelements that allow to describe and quantify well-beingand livelihoods. In a second step, we analyze documentedassociations between the elements to outline climateimpact pathways and indirect effects of changes in singlesystem components, using an influence matrix. Thenovel approach provides an important first step to pointtowards climate change adaptation measures, which mosteffectively increase human well-being, while identifyingpotential unintended side-effects. Even though there aresome limitations to assessing well-being and livelihoodson a global scale, a consistent measure of AHEAD is ofutmost importance for future sustainability and climateimpact analyses.