Teaching (and learning about) vulnerability

In December, I helped organise an exciting 3-day course on vulnerability and the concepts and methods used to assess it. The course was attended by 30 participants from various disciplines and from sectors as varied as government officials, PhD researchers, NGO and private sector professionals. We used a mix of classroom teaching, games, field visits and guest lectures and focussed on co-learning, especially since the participants themselves were in positions that required them to conduct vulnerability assessments to plan for development projects.

What emerged from the course? 

1. There is still a lot of confusion about what vulnerability means and the language used by researchers (adaptation, resilience, development pathways) is at odds with practitioner experiences (climate change being one of the many stressors people experience) and the \’vulnerable\’ themselves (slum dwellers are more concerned and motivated to act on issues of land tenure and possible eviction which are embedded in larger political and development processes than mull over climatic risks). 
2. Who assesses vulnerability shapes what is assessed. For our field visits, some teams took the standard approach of Vulnerability = f (Exposure, Sensitivity, Adaptive Capacity) while a group of young researchers took a more rights-based approach where they charted the trajectory of a slum\’s formation and relocation as the context for multi-dimensional vulnerability. 
3. Quick, quantitative vulnerability assessments tend to mask deeper drivers of vulnerability and thus for any assessment to be meaningful and truly representative, a mix of snapshot assessments and qualitative discussions (development trajectories, historical timelines) is necessary.