Modeling Kenya's Vulnerability to Climate Change ? A Multifactor Approach

Kenyan landscape has experienced in extremes the impacts of climate change. This study assesses climate change vulnerability and shows its spatial distribution in Kenya in the last thirty years by using geospatial techniques to integrate climate data, land use data and socio-economic data. The measure of vulnerability (vulnerability index) has been used in this study to indicate the combined effects of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to climate change. Various factors representing exposure, sensitivity, impacts and adaptive capacity were derived from spatial data. Primary data obtained from official sources was used in the assessment. The climate change vulnerability map developed highlights how different regions are vulnerable to climate change with 5.01 % of the country was categorized as highest vulnerability, 79.9 % as high vulnerable, 14.82 % as moderately vulnerable and 0.28 % being least vulnerable. These figures are obtained after weighted analysis of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Vulnerability index map obtained can be a useful tool to guide decision making in Kenya climate change response planning and the implementation of mitigation measures to the effects of climate change.