Decentering climate in vulnerability analysis: On aspiration, striving, and the fullness of life in uncertain times

• Current discussions of vulnerability tend to focus on avoiding loss and harm, especially from climate-related stressors. • We reframe vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting phenomenon, unfolding across a broader life trajectory. • Vulnerability is more than the risk of loss and harm but is experienced in relation to the lives people wish to build and what they value. • This understanding recognizes people’s sense of self, emotion, and agency by foregrounding lived experiences and aspirations for a better life. • Our work recasts vulnerability as a generative concept, anchored in shared human striving and a desire for better futures. Vulnerability is a core concept within the environmental social sciences. Yet contemporary discussions often focus narrowly on specific kinds of risks, especially relating to climate, with particular attention to avoiding loss and harm. We recast vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting concept by arguing for two analytical shifts. First, we decenter climate by analyzing how vulnerability unfolds across interconnected spheres of life within a broader life trajectory. Second, we argue for an understanding of vulnerability that is far more than avoiding loss but always experienced in relation to the lives people have reason to value and strive to build. We illustrate this framing by recounting three in-depth life histories complemented with observations from a broader sample of 52 households in rural Nepal, a context that has experienced significant climate, environmental, and other shocks in recent years. Our work reveals how these more dramatic events intersect with a wide range of everyday human concerns — health, labour, debt, care for loved ones, and the need for social belonging. We argue that a more experiential and cross-cutting understanding of vulnerability holds potential to support development pathways that better address people’s lived needs and aspirations in ways that recognize their sense of self and agency. More fundamentally, this framing provides insight into our shared human condition in present times, amidst mounting climate-related damages, a pandemic, wars, and continued political upheaval. If vulnerability is the propensity for loss and suffering, what lies in wait if it is to be addressed? To which future should we strive?