Community perceptions of climate-change vulnerability in Seychelles and some considerations on data and methodological gaps

Many ways and techniques to assess vulnerability to climate change have been developed with the aim of informing the development of policies that reduce the risks associated with climate change. This is important especially for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like  Seychelles, with vulnerability challenges associated to small land-size, coastal erosion, sea-level rise, ocean warming, variability in rainfall, flooding events, etc. In order to assess community perceptions on climate change vulnerability, this study utilizes data from the Ecosystem Based Adaptation (EbA) South Project in Seychelles, and at the same time highlights some data and methodological gaps. An indicator approach was used with the values 0, 1 and 2 ranging from low to high weighting for exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity across eight communities in Seychelles. Despite relatively higher levels of awareness on climate change, increase in vulnerability is observed between the years 2014 to 2018. Such yearly averages can provide a much better understanding of vulnerability if they were specific to each of the eight communities during the stated time frame. Those communities which are relatively exposed and sensitive to the impacts of climate change, could have benefited from such an analysis. Gaps in the data emanate from the methodology which was not properly utilized and in some instances was lacking in content (e.g. some major and sub-components relevant to the study were not included). Therefore, future vulnerability studies in Seychelles should address the following topics: (i) a quantitative assessment of vulnerability to climate change across the 28 districts in Seychelles, (ii) exploring climate change vulnerability across sectors in Seychelles, and (iii) a study that addresses the vulnerability of fishery-based livelihoods to the impacts of climate variability and change in Seychelles.