ABSTRACT
Recognising how vulnerability has often been used as a Western construct, this chapter proposes a critical, processual, vulnerabilities-based frame for problematising and ‘provincialising’ the notion of the Anthropocene, across three main points:
Integration: A vulnerability reduction focus integrates climate change adaptation within disaster risk reduction (DRR), with climate change as one hazard amongst many, providing a more encompassing approach to environmental hazards and risks.
Open-endedness: Vulnerability and vulnerability reduction as open-ended and multiscalar processes account for uneven connectedness, essential for considering and critiquing the Anthropocene(s). Irrespective of any globalness, the Anthropocene(s) are experienced across different times and space scales, as elucidated by a vulnerability process framing.
Temporality: This longitudinal process approach, unlike stage or index-based formulations, links vulnerability to power, environmental justice, and histories of colonialism and imperialism. This promotes an integrated approach to DRR and climate change, supporting communities in formulating their own, less vulnerable futures.
In sum, a critical vulnerabilities basis offers an integrated, processual, open-ended, and multi-scalar framework to conceptualise differentiated environmental pasts, presents, and futures.
