Is my vulnerability so different from your’s? A call for compassionate climate change research

Current conceptualizations of vulnerability have so far served to describe—and reproduce—social difference, setting people apart at local and global scales. Yet vulnerability is fundamental to the connectedness in social relations critical to understanding and acting on climate change. A more compassionate type of research is urgently required; that is, one that goes beyond the material and political dimensions to investigate the deeply personal. Drawing on politics of adaptation, emotional geographies, sustainability science and psychology literatures, the paper reconceptualizes vulnerability as co-suffering, linking lived experiences with a shared humanity.