Abstract: Global environmental change and sustainability science increasingly recognize the need to address the consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere. These changes raise questions such as: Who and what are vulnerable to the multiple environmental changes underway, and where? Research demonstrates that vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards (perturbations and stresses) alone but also resides in the sensitivity and resilience of the system experiencing such hazards. This recognition requires revisions and enlargements in the basic design of vulnerability assessments, including the capacity to treat coupled human–environment systems and those linkages within and without the systems that affect their vulnerability. A vulnerability framework for the assessment of coupled human-environment systems is presented.

Abstract: This article uses a systemic perspective to identify and analyze the conceptual relations among vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity within socio-ecological systems (SES). Since different intellectual traditions use the terms in different, sometimes incompatible, ways, they emerge as strongly related but unclear in the precise nature of their relationships. A set of diagnostic questions is proposed regarding the specification of the terms to develop a shared conceptual framework for the natural and social dimensions of global change. Also, development of a general theory of change in SESs is suggested as an important agenda item for research on global change.

Observações da Tathi:

1. Mini estado da arte dos temas: sistema sócio-ecológico; vulnerabilidade; mudança ou transformação do sistema; sensibilidade; capacidade de resposta; exposição; resiliência; capacidade de adaptação.

2. As perguntas que o artigo procura responder são:

• What is meant by ‘‘harm’’ or ‘‘transformation’’ (structural change, shifting domains of attraction, moving away from equilibrium states or trajectories)?
• Is positive vulnerability a useful notion?
• Does vulnerability apply to internal perturbations?
• Is vulnerability a property of the system or of the relationship between the system and the perturbation?
• Is negative (perverse) resilience a suitable concept?
• Does adaptation include improvements of the system in a non-changing environment?
• Is adaptive capacity the same as capacity of response?
• Is resilience the same as adaptive capacity?