ORIAL: EXCLUSION, VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTATION

People, communities and nations are confronted with exclusion, vulnerability and adaptation. These are found across space and communities in different shades. They reflect the complexity of human societies and the imperfection of the various forces that define, shape and nurture human interactions. These phenomena are related (Nunes, 2021) and all have both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Their vertical dimension derives from their sectoral attribute in terms of economic, social and even political aspects while the horizontal dimension relates to their spatial manifestation. In addition, both exclusion and vulnerability are associated with similar causal factors of historical experiences (slave trade, colonialism, apartheid, postcolonial economic relations) and marginalising governance system including poor space and settlement governance. Exclusion, often called social exclusion (Sen, 2000) could also be an external effect of seemingly good public policy and action. Exclusion, in simple terms, means that some people, communities and spaces are outside the driving and or the active elements of the society. They lie at the margin (Estivill,2003) of the community driving forces. Marginality undermines capability. Hence, Sen (2000) opines that exclusion can be ‘constitutively a part of capability deprivation as well as instrumentally a cause of diverse capability failures’.