Regions vulnerable to climate change - findings and methodological considerations

The impacts of climate change will not be evenly spread around the globe. Instead, several studies point to some specific regions that are argued to be particularly vulnerable or prone to climate change-related conflict (‘hotspots’) The overarching aim of this report is to describe these regions and to look at the underlying methodology used by those studies when identifying the regional ‘hotspots.’ Special attention is paid to the specific impacts of climate change that the studies considered, which security approaches they adopted, the time-frames or climate scenarios used and whether there are additional transformation processes or converging trends. The analysis is structured on four general themes: biophysical exposure, environmental degradation, socio-economic vulnerabilities and history of violence. In sum, based on their respective security implications deriving from the impacts of climate change, the resulting nine regions are examined: the Arctic, South-East & Eastern Europe, the Southern Mediterranean, the Sahel zone, Southern Africa, South-West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and South America.