ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an overview of climate change, sustainable development, and vulnerability. It illustrates how climate change impacts vulnerable populations within developing regions. In examining the real vulnerabilities faced by disadvantaged populations, the chapter summarizes the key debates in this area. It lays out various definitions of vulnerability as they apply to the topic and highlights the ways in which the very notion of vulnerability is constructed and serves to reproduce inequities in international relations. The chapter presents critical examples including racialized and gendered constructions of vulnerability and their impacts on important outcomes in sustainable development. Research on vulnerability and sustainable development in an era of climate change faces an important challenge: to model socioeconomic transformation and its interactive relationship with climate change. The chapter concludes with some key events that are challenging and shaping the field into the future.
