IUCN SSC Guidelines for Assessing Species’ Vulnerability to Climate Change

This guidance document has been developed by a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment working group convened under the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Climate Change Specialist Group. It provides a useful reference for those wishing to understand and assess climate change impacts on their focal species, at site, site network and/or at broader spatial scales.

The report aims to guide users toward sensible and defensible approaches, given the current state of knowledge and their objectives and available resources. Considering the rapid pace of developments in this young and exciting field, it is anticipated that regularly updating and refining of the document will be done. The intended target audiences include, amongst others, conservation practitioners (e.g., for CCVA of their focal species or the species in their focal area) and researchers (e.g., for carrying out CCVA to serve conservation, or to evaluate the rigorousness of others’ studies).

These guidelines cover an outline of some of the terms commonly used in climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA), and describe three dominant CCVA approaches, namely correlative (niche-based), mechanistic and trait-based approaches.