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Assessing species' vulnerability to climate change is a prerequisite for developing effective strategies to conserve them. The last three decades have seen exponential growth in the number of studies evaluating how, how much, why, when, and where species will be impacted by climate change. We provide an overview of the rapidly developing field of climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) and describe key concepts, terms, steps and considerations. We stress the importance of identifying the full range of pressures, impacts and their associated mechanisms that species face and using this as a basis for selecting the appropriate assessment approaches for quantifying vulnerability. We outline four CCVA assessment approaches, namely trait?based, correlative, mechanistic and combined approaches and discuss their use. Since any assessment can deliver unreliable or even misleading results when incorrect data and parameters are applied, we discuss finding, selecting, and applying input data and provide examples of open?access resources. Because rare, small?range, and declining?range species are often of particular conservation concern while also posing significant challenges for CCVA, we describe alternative ways to assess them. We also describe how CCVAs can be used to inform IUCN Red List assessments of extinction risk. Finally, we suggest future directions in this field and propose areas where research efforts may be particularly valuable.

Climate change-- our approach: The science of climate change : scale of the environment challenge ; Economics, ethics and climate change ; Ethical frameworks and intertemporal equity -- Impacts of climate change on growth and development: How climate change will affect people around the world ; Implications of climate change for development ; Costs of climate change in developed countries ; Economic modelling of climate-change impacts -- The economics of stabilisation: Projecting the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions ; Climate change and the Kuznets curve ; The challenge of stabilisation ; Identifying the costs of mitigation ; Macroeconomic models of costs ; Structural change and competitiveness ; Key statistics for 123 UK production sectors ; Opportunities and wider benefits from climate policies ; Towards a goal for climate-change policy -- Policy responses for mitigation: Harnessing markets for mitigation : the role of taxation and trading ; Carbon pricing and emission markets in practice ; Accelerating technological innovation ; Beyond carbon markets and technology -- Policy responses for adaptation: Understanding the economics of adaptation ; Adaptation in the developed world ; Adaptation in the developing world -- International collective action: Framework for understanding international collective action for climate change -- Creating a global price for carbon -- Supporting the transition to a low-carbon global economy -- Promoting effective international technology co-operation -- Reversing emissions from land use change -- International support for adaptation -- Conclusions : building and sustaining international co-operation on climate change.

The Review first examines the evidence on the economic impacts of climate change itself, and explores the economics of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The second half of the Review considers the complex policy challenges involved in managing the transition to a low-carbon economy and in ensuring that societies can adapt to the consequences of climate change that can no longer be avoided.