Climate change and flood risk: vulnerability assessment in an urban poor community in Mexico

The impacts of climate change tend to be unevenly distributed, affecting mostly urban poor communities. This research analyses the case of El Colli, a community with high levels of marginalization and urban poverty in an area characterized by informal settlements in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara (state of Jalisco, Mexico). The main objective was to analyse the vulnerability to climate change in El Colli, focusing on the flood risk it is exposed to and using a mixed-methods design with various research tools. The findings show the specific aspects of vulnerability in a context of urban poverty, in which basic municipal services are scarce, government action is inadequate and residents show a high acceptance of risk. Based on the data, we state the need to incorporate local urban challenges into the debate on climate change, particularly those affecting informal settlements