Perceptions of Local Vulnerability and the Relative Importance of Climate Change in Rural Ecuador Helen Gutierrez 1 & Gwenyth O. Lee 2 & Betty Corozo Angulo 4 & Jessica Dimka 3 & Joseph N.S. Eisenberg 2 & James A. Trostle 5 & Rebecca Hardin 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Rural, natural resource dependent communities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and their input is critical in devel- oping solutions, but the study of risk perception within and among vulnerable communities remains underdeveloped. Our multi- disciplinary research team used a mixed-methods approach to document, analyze, and conceptualize the interacting factors that shape vulnerability and to explore community members’ perceptions of the role and relative importance of climate change compared to other factors in three rural communities in Ecuador. Economic instability, lack of access to basic services, and environmental degradation are perceived as greater threats to community well being than increasing seasonal variability and flooding. Programs and policies directed at climate change adaptation should integrate climate and non-climate related stressors. Our findings also point to a greater need for collaboration across public health, poverty alleviation, and environmental manage- ment fields through practical research targeting assistance to vulnerable populations. Keywords Well being . Vulnerability . Riparian flooding . Marginality . Climate change . Climate adaptation . Esmeraldas . Ecuador Introduction The impacts of global climate are felt differently among indi- viduals and communities based on their geography and capac- ity to cope with or adapt to climatic stressors they experience (Adger and Kelly 1999; Frick-Trzebitzky et al. 2017). These capacities are in turn determined by underlying sociopolitical systems and historical power differentials. In broad terms, vulnerability to climate change, although defined differently across disciplines (Bohle et al. 1994; Brien et al. 2004; Kelly and Adger 2000; Wisner 2004), is produced at the intersection of geography, individual endowments, and institutional and structural capacities and priorities. As a result, it has been argued that solutions to climate change require interventions to address both specific climatic risks and generic structural deficits, such as lack of income, education, or political power (Lemos et al. 2016). A related approach within vulnerability research focuses on the need to recognize and harness local understandings of vulnerability and adaptive capacity as a tool for climate- change planning (Webler et al. 2016). These approaches em- phasize, often through participatory risk assessment or risk mapping (van Aalst et al. 2008), the unique experiences faced by communities while also seeking commonalities across sys- tems that can provide insight or represent leverage points for intervention. However, they have also been criticized for a tendency to focus on climatic risks (Antwi-Agyei et al. 2016) rather than exploring the interaction between specific and generic sources of vulnerability. Lack of financial, hu- man, or political resources may reduce the capacity of a com- munity to develop or maintain climate-specific infrastructure, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00165-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Gwenyth O. Lee golee@umich.edu 1 School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 2 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 3 Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway 4 Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Técnica de Esmeraldas Luis Vargas Torres, Esmeraldas, Ecuador 5 Department of Anthropology, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA Human Ecology https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00165-1