A REVIEW OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGES COMMON METHODOLOGY FOR ASSESSING THE VULNERABILITY OF COASTAL AREAS TO SEA-LEVELRISE

The Common Methodology for Assessing the Vulnerability to Sea-Level Ri se was developed by the Coastal Zone Management Subgroup (CZMS) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1991. Its main ob jectives were to provide a methodologically rigorous, yet simple, step -wise technique for assessing the impact of sea-level rise. The method was to be commonly applicable to all coastal nations, and it was to a llow comparison of the assessments to determine which coastal regions of the world are the most vulnerable. The effectiveness of The Common Methodology is reviewed in this article on the basis of whether or not it met its objectives. Despite considerable efforts, the objectives h ave proved difficult to achieve in most circumstances. This indicates that The Common Methodology has not been wholly successful in its appl ication. Its apparent failure has been due to methodological and opera tional weaknesses, combined with poor understanding of how decisions t o mitigate the impacts of sea-level rise are made in the majority of c oastal nations. It thus is concluded that the IPCC's recent decision t o abandon The Common Methodology in favor of a less prescriptive asses sment approach is well founded. A less prescriptive approach, such as a flexible assessment framework, has a potential to explicitly recogni ze the economic, social, and environmental diversity of coastal zones and the administrative systems developed to manage them. The Australia n Commonwealth Government has concurred with this view, and currently is funding nine case studies to develop vulnerability assessment proce dures that are appropriate for the varied jurisdictional and biophysic al characteristics of Australian states and region. The broad approach used to establish the Australian case studies is introduced in this a rticle.