Vulnerability to climate change, depopulation and the global food regime An index-based approach for rural Spain
Villamayor Tomás, Sergio (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Política i de Dret Públic)
Gaitan Cremaschi, Daniel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Corbera, Esteve (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Geografia)
Pierri-Daunt, Ana Beatriz (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Santos de Lima, Letícia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Data:	2025
Resum:	Rural regions in Europe currently face multiple interacting stressors, including climate change, depopulation, and the deepening of a global a food regime. Research on the overlapping impact of these climate, demographic and socio-economic phenomena on rural livelihoods is mounting, yet efforts to identify larger-scale patterns at country level are still scarce. In this article, we develop a rural vulnerability index that accounts for these dynamics, encompassing 27 variables calculated at municipal and county levels from publicly available data. We apply the index to the case of Spain, one of the largest producers of agricultural commodities and one of the most affected by depopulation and climate change in the European Union. We demonstrate the existence of a vulnerability belt around the country's central plateau, which is notably driven by shifts in climate, the adverse effects of the global food regime, and low adaptive capacity of the municipalities that conform such belt. We also show that most and least vulnerable counties exhibit contrasting spatial distributions at the municipal level, and that overlapping impacts of the three stressors occur mostly in remote rural areas. The research illustrates the importance of integrating depopulation in the study of multi-stressor rural vulnerability and sheds light on the potential and limitations of using a quantitative and spatially explicit indices for the assessment of rural vulnerability in Spain, and potentially other European countries.
Ajuts:	"la Caixa" Foundation LCF/PR/SR19/52540011 Generalitat de Catalunya 2020/BP-000156 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RyC-2017-22782 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CEX2019-000940-M
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2024-001506-M
Nota:	Volkswagen Stiftung, Water4Whom project (grant n. 96955); Postdoc Maria Zambrano grant (MZ2021-31)
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	Environmental science & policy, Vol. 174 (December 2025) , art. 104254, ISSN 1873-6416

DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104254

13 p, 6.4 MB

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