Disasters 30(1):39–48CrossRef UN/ISDR (2004) Living with risk—a selleck kinase inhibitor global review of disaster reduction initiatives. UN/ISDR, Geneva Footnotes 1 Vulnerability is the condition determined by physical, social, economic, and environmental factors or processes, which increase the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards. 2 Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the SN-38 purchase character, magnitude, and rate
of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.”
“The concept of global environmental change evolved from concerns about the sustainability of the Earth, which is being transformed
by human activities at an Sapitinib cost unprecedented scale and pace. United Nations (UN) world population data (http://www.un.org/esa/population) indicates that it took about 150 years (1750–1900) for the world’s population to more than triple from 0.7 to about 2.5 billion, whereas it only took 40 years (1950–1990) for the population to double again to 5 billion. It is estimated that more than 1 billion people were added to the world’s population between 1995 and 2008. The unprecedented growth in the human population in the last centuries translates to escalated resource consumption, as manifested in relatively high rates of agriculture and food production, industrial development, energy production and urbanization. These human enterprises lead to local land-use and land-cover changes that, when aggregated,
have a global-scale impact on climate, hydrology, biogeochemistry, biodiversity and the ability of biological Cepharanthine systems to support human needs (Foley et al. 2005; Sala et al. 2000). Sustainability is the guiding principle for international environmental policy and decision-making in the twenty-first century. It cuts across several international agenda, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, among others. The sustainability principle obscures the distinction between environment and development and encourages the fusion of global change research and sustainable development (Turner 1997). There is a growing international community of researchers working on themes that are central to understanding land-use and land-cover change as a major driver of environmental change at local, regional and global scales. These scholars work within the interdisciplinary field of land-change science (LCS)—a scientific domain that seeks to understand the dynamics of the land system as a coupled human-environment system (CHES).