PROVIA Guidance on Assessing Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change

It is an output of PROVIA, the Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation, a global initiative launched jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and hosted by UNEP in Nairobi.

The document was produced by a team of 10 authors, coordinated by SEI’s Richard Klein and supported by a large group of experts and reviewers. The conceptual basis, the decision trees and the methods and tools included in the PROVIA Guidance build on research conducted within the project MEDIATION: Methodology for Effective Decisionmaking on Impacts and Adaptation, funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme.

PROVIA has updated and improved on existing guidance, discussing key issues at each stage of the adaptation cycle and covering the wide array of approaches, methods and tools available to address them. The resulting materials should be useful to researchers, adaptation practitioners, planners and policy-makers alike. The PROVIA Guidance is meant to be informative rather than prescriptive, and is conceived as a “living document”: the current version is a consultation document that will benefit from feedback from users.

The preparation of the PROVIA Guidance was funded by UNEP, with additional support provided by the Government of Sweden.

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