Climate change and depopulation are two of the most important changes leading to the vulnerability of rural territories in Spain. Climate change in Spain will reduce water availability, leading indirectly to crop productivity losses and land abandonment, as well as different forms of agricultural intensification (González de Molina et al., 2019). Depopulation, in turn, has translated into the ageing and masculinisation of the population, gender inequality and job precariousness, which have in turn exacerbated processes of agricultural intensification and land abandonment.

These interactions between environmental change and rural livelihoods are under research, but there is not a clear understanding of the whole picture. This article undertakes a systematic review of the scientific evidence published about rural vulnerability in Spain in order to build a comprehensive snapshot of what has already been studied and of the main learnings. The article addresses the following questions: (a) which are the main environmental threats and social factors that increase rural vulnerability (i.e., the degree to which rural populations are affected by some sort of hazard) in Spain?, and (b) which factors either enable or hamper adaptation (i.e., the ability to respond) to these threats? 

Figure 1 maps out the geographic distribution of case studies across the 17 Spanish autonomous communities and shows that Andalusia and Catalonia represent a major share. Regarding the scale analysed, 15% of the studies focus at the national or provincial level including sometimes a comparison with other countries, 22% at the autonomous-community level, 12% at the municipal level, 7% at the comarca level (i.e., an administrative division that encompasses several municipalities), and 21% simultaneously at multiple levels (e.g., the autonomous community and the municipal scales). 
 

In 48% of the studies reviewed, climate change appears as a single threat to rural areas, whilst in another 35% it appears in combination with other threats (figure 2). Environmental degradation processes (i.e., soil erosion, contamination of water and soil, etc.) are the second-most-analysed type of threat, followed by policy and market dynamics, such as price volatility and the influence of international markets. 
 

Within the literature review, 40% of the studies consider more than one threat at a time. Figure 3 shows the distribution of the combination of these threats. The most frequent groupings of threats are climate change and environmental degradation (25%), climate change and drought (15%), climate change and policy (13%), and climate change and market dynamics (9%). Not all the studies informing about multiple threats also study interactions among them: 65% do so, while the rest merely hint at their co-occurrence. 

Given the large amount of existing threats that affect rural vulnerability, it is important to observe the ability of social groups and/or governments to respond to them and minimise their negative effects, which facilitates adaptation. Policy and governmental measures, including subsidies and public policy support, represent by far the most significant adaptation enablers identified in the studies (51% of studies mention them). However, one of the most significant categories of enablers – economic – is only addressed in 14% of studies. Regarding the barriers, 29% of studies state that policy and governmental measures hinder adaptation.

A detailed look at policy-governance enablers and barriers unveils a relatively asymmetrical distribution across the two categories. Planning issues (i.e., plans/policies not tailored enough to climate change) and coordination deficits (i.e., among public authorities and between these and private actors) stand out as barriers, while the availability of resources (mostly economic, in the form of subsidies), appropriate regulatory frameworks (mostly associated with EU action), and sufficient involvement of local authority/non-governmental organisations (e.g., from decentralisation and participatory decision-making) are the most salient enablers.

A large group of studies uses a quantitative (modelling) approach and are interested in environmental and social dynamics. However, they do not focus enough on multiple threats and factors. Many studies belonging to this cluster concentrate on the agricultural sector (i.e., the economic performance of different agricultural management practices). Social-ecological studies, on the other hand, tend to share a focus on climate change, environmental degradation, and market-related factors, and investigate their interactions.

Non-modelling studies include highly interdisciplinary studies that underline multiple threats and their interactions, with a focus on policy, population, and market-related threats, as well as much narrower studies that concentrate on the social impacts of adaptations. 

Overall, this literature review has allowed us to identify a series of research and policy gaps that need to be addressed in the coming years to generate a more nuanced understanding of how rural livelihoods experience change, and how policies and investments can support adaptation actions and rural wellbeing. The literature concerned with rural vulnerability in Spain has been interested in multiple factors and their interactions, with environmental threats, such as climate change and environmental degradation, being considered more often than policy, market dynamics, and depopulation. Moreover, an important weakness of the existing research is the lack of clear definitions and frameworks for considering vulnerability, which limits their comparability and blurs their contribution to the advancement of vulnerability theories and methods. 

This systematic literature review has also made evident the existence of two main typologies of studies that diverge in their methodological approach (quantitative vs. qualitative) and that reflect larger disciplinary divides between environmental and engineering sciences on the one hand, and social sciences on the other. 

Finally, this exercise points to the need to better coordinate and integrate rural investments and public policy. The role of the latter is still ambivalent when it comes to adaptations, since policy is found to be both an enabler of adaptation (by providing resources and ensuring stakeholder involvement) and a barrier to it (as a result of coordination and planning deficits). 

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