Analyze the Three Dimensions of Vulnerability to Climate Change to Better Understand Environmental Injustice: An Interdisciplinary Case-Study in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

Stéphanie Dos Santos, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)
Abdul Wahab Karamoko, Institut de Géographie Tropicale (IGT), Université Felix Houphouet Boigny
Attoumane Artadji, Laboratoire Population Environnement Développement (LPED), IRD, AMU
Eric-Pascal Zahiri, Laboratoire des Sciences de la Matières, de l'Environnement et de l'Energie Solaire (LASMES)

From 1995 to 2015, floods alone represented 47 per cent of all climate-related disasters, affecting more than two billion people. In Africa, cities are particularly vulnerable to flooding. Since the 1990s, the need to consider the vulnerability of populations in risk-management analysis has been widely recognized. Turner et al. (2003), and later Birkmann and Wisner (2006), have provided a comprehensive conceptual framework that integrates the multidimensional nature of vulnerability at different scales and in different contexts. Turner et al (2003) define vulnerability in terms of three dimensions: exposure, sensitivity and resilience. The literature on vulnerability to flooding highlights the multiple dimensions of risk factors. However, little research has analyzed these three joint dimensions. For exemple, there is a clear lack of research on effects of environmental and social factors on flood risk at the household level in African cities. Through an interdisciplinary research project (demography, geography, physics and hydrology) in Abidjan, the major city of Côte d’Ivoire, we have been able to carry out research on the three dimensions of vulnerability. The results show a significant differential in vulnerability in the 3 dimensions, depending on the neighborhood, demonstrating environmental injustices sometimes produced by the responses of the public authorities themselves.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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