Geography and climate vulnerabilities

Geography and geographers have a long and influential history of research on climate change, with a significant impact on scholarship, international assessments and public policy. In this commentary, I focus on geographic work on climate vulnerability, arguing that geographers have been fundamental to our understanding of the impacts of climate variability and climate hazards and to the assessments of Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Geographic work on climate vulnerability is traced to pioneering work in hazards and cultural ecology and to the rise of critical perspectives on the political economy and political ecology of hazards and then climate change. I discuss the role of geographers in the IPCC from 1990 to present and the importance of concepts originating in geography such as vulnerability mapping, double exposure, borderless climate risks, discourses, intersectionality, climate-resilient development, labour vulnerabilities and maladaptation.