This resource material is designed as a generic guide for planning, implementing and reporting an integrated vulnerability assessment (IVA) that targets atoll communities in the Pacific Islands region. It is based on a sustainable livelihoods-based approach that combines the assessment of vulnerability to both climate change and disasters.

The key principles of this IVA toolkit include the: • interconnectedness of social and ecological systems; • interconnectedness of sectors (e.g. water, forestry, agriculture, fisheries) and livelihood assets (natural, infrastructural, human, financial and institutional); • long-term and continuous iterative learning and knowledge co-production between local communities and technical resilient development practitioners; • an emphasis on participatory learning and action (PLA) tools that values, draws and builds on traditional and local knowledge experience so as to give local communities ‘ownership’ and empowerment; • facilitation of inclusive decision-making that creates opportunities for engaging vulnerable groups; and • the valuing of local and traditional knowledge and the full engagement and ownership of beneficiaries at various stages of the resilient development process.

This toolkit is a product of a comprehensive design, trial and reflection process on the part of the Kiribati National Expert Group (KNEG), SPC, SPREP and GIZ climate adaptation and disaster risk management practitioners

Attribution

Integrated Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Atoll Islands: a collaborative approach / jointly prepared by the
Pacific Community (SPC), Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH