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Measuring populations' vulnerabilities for famine and food security interventions: the case of Ethiopia's Chronic Vulnerability Index
Author(s) -
Burg Jericho
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7717.2008.01057.x
Subject(s) - vulnerability (computing) , vulnerability index , famine , vulnerability assessment , construct (python library) , food security , social vulnerability , environmental health , psychological intervention , index (typography) , computer security , environmental resource management , risk analysis (engineering) , geography , business , medicine , economics , computer science , ecology , climate change , biology , agriculture , archaeology , psychiatry , world wide web , programming language
The concept of vulnerability has become an important part of food security analyses since the 1980s. It is seen as having two sides: exposure to external hazards; and an inability to cope with those shocks, attributed to social, political, and economic factors. Numerous attempts have been made to construct models to determine levels of vulnerability among populations. This paper analyses one such attempt, the Chronic Vulnerability Index (CVI), developed to measure levels of vulnerability to food insecurity in Ethiopia. The example of the CVI reveals many of the difficulties associated with producing a basic model of vulnerability that can be used in disaster mitigation. Ultimately, the CVI assumes that vulnerability is a linear, additive phenomenon with discrete causes and effects and fails to capture interactions between hazards and the human systems that produce and complicate them. The paper concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the CVI.