Cause and response: vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene

In the Anthropocene, climate events and associated suffering can no longer be cast as acts of God or nature. They are now at least partly linked to human agency and responsibility. Of course, causes of climate-related disaster have always been social. Vulnerability is, by definition, the social precarity found on the ground when hazards arrive. It does not fall from the sky. While there is no disaster without hazard, without vulnerability, hazard is nil (Blaikie et al. 1994). The conditions of precarity have first to be in place. Vulnerability analysis identifies the causes of this precarity.