Tool to Identify Climate Opportunities
According to the latest scientific assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022):
efforts to keep the world’s average temperature well below 2°C with respect to pre-industrial levels and preferably below 1.5°C.
evidence of observed impacts, projected risks, levels and trends in vulnerability, and adaptation limits, demonstrate that worldwide climate-resilient development action is more urgent than previously assessed.
Identifying intervention opportunities and taking anticipatory action is key for our future health and wellbeing.
The effects of climate change are not only the melting of the ice caps. In Yorkshire, we could have an increase in wetter winters and dryer summers.
What is it?
The Tool to Identify Climate Opportunities (TICO) consists of a series of indices that summarise information to facilitate decision making and advance adaptive pathways toward increasing climate-resilient development.
According to the latest scientific report of the IPCC (2022), vulnerability is defined as the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected and encompasses a variety of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.
Climate vulnerability means that risk becomes severe where there is high exposure, high sensitivity and low capacities to cope and adapt.
Sensitivity refers to those aspects that predispose people to be adversely affected by climate-related impacts.
Climate vulnerability also depends on the level of exposure. If you live in a town or a city at flood risk, by the river, your level of exposure is higher than the person living further away from the river.
Finally, climate vulnerability depends on the capacities you have to cope and adapt to climate-related hazards
The tool consists of robust indices that combine more than 50 datasets following a hierarchical approach (See: overview).
Climate vulnerability by LSOA
Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) are small areas designed to be of similar population size, with an average of approximately 1,500 residents or 650 households. They are designed to improve the reporting of small area statistics in England and Wales. LSOAs are used to make decisions.
Leeds has 482 LSOAs. If you are not sure which is the LSOA where you live, you can find it here.
Below is a map of the climate vulnerability of the 482 LSOAs of Leeds. 1=shows the LSOA that scored the highest in the climate vulnerability index, and 482= is the LSOA that showed the lowest score.
Climate vulnerability index vs Years of potential life lost (IoD '19)
The graph below shows the relationship between the potential life lost indicator and the climate vulnerability' scores obtained by each of the 482 LSOAs in Leeds. It can be seen that they move in the same direction, that is, the LSOAs with higher levels of climate vulnerability are the same LSOAs with higher levels of potential life lost indicator.
Climate vulnerability by Ward
Leeds has 33 wards. In the graph below, you can see the score of your ward. If you are not sure about it, you can find it here.
The scores go from 1 to 100.
It is desirable to score lower on sensitivity and exposure, and score high on capacities... why? click on sensitivity, exposure and capacities to find out what this means.
There are areas in Leeds with higher sensitivity, higher exposure and lower levels of capacities
For instance, Roundhay scored the highest (100) on capacities, meaning that in comparison to the rest of the wards, Roundhay has more capacities that can help them to cope with and adapt to climate-related risks.
Harewood scored the lowest on sensitivity (1) and the lowest on exposure (1), meaning that in comparison to the rest of the wards, Harewood has the fewest factors that predispose it to be adversely affected by climate-related risks, and the lowest climate-related risks.
Explore the ranks that your ward obtained in the different areas assessed
RED = HIGHEST RANK (33 = highest)
GREEN = LOWEST RANK (1 = lowest)
*Except for Capacities (red=lowest capacities)
Climate vulnerability and Arts
Artist Orange Ibreck, Youth4Strike and Paola Sakai collaborated on an art piece presented in the Millennium Square in Leeds as part of the Climate Youth Strike 24 September 2021.
Which is the pathway that we want to choose?
“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”
Greta Thunberg, 23 April 2019
Let's use the tools at our disposal to plan ways to modify our homes, neighbourhoods, places of work and public spaces to create comfortable environments for FUTURE climatic conditions, and that TODAY increases health and well-being and promote inclusive growth.
If you would like to get involved, let me know!