Snakes and Ladders, Buffers and Passports: Rethinking Poverty, Vulnerability and Wellbeing

Abstract

Much research to date has tended to view vulnerability by discipline or sector, yet individuals and households experience multiple, interacting and sometimes compound vulnerabilities. Cross-disciplinary thinking is emerging as multi-dimensional vulnerability is likely to become an increasingly important concept if the outlook over the next 15 to 25 years is one of multiple, interacting and compound stressors and crises, a result of the “perfect-storm” or “long-crisis” thesis of the interaction of demographics, climate change and food and energy prices. A realigned analytical lens is thus useful to bring together the various intellectual strands involved in multi-dimensional vulnerability analysis. In light of the above, this paper reviews the literature on vulnerability and asks what a “three-dimensional human wellbeing” approach—a complement to more traditional ways of understanding poverty—might contribute to the analysis of vulnerability. (…)