This Participatory Vulnerability and Adaptation (V&A) Assessment is a core component of the overall PACE-SD V&A Assessment and Action Methodology. It is a comprehensive and participatory assessment that guides communities through a process in which to identify appropriate and sustainable activities to enhance their adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change. Once a community has been identified to partake in climate change adaptation activities (based on the PACE-SD Rapid Assessment; see Limalevu, 2012), this V&A assessment is to be carried out. This implies that the project assessment team would have already visited the site during the process of site selection and would have some knowledge of the community and its vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change from the information gathered. This V&A assessment should take between one to two days per community to complete, depending on weather conditions, and the availability of community members and leaders at the time of the visit. Plate 1 showcases diverse images from around the Pacific, capturing the various resources that communities utilise to sustain their livelihoods. This is an important point to make early on in this guidebook as the vulnerability of communities or households to climate change can be influenced by the availability of and access to livelihood resources, adequate social services and government policies â rather than just climate itself. Therefore, this assessment holistically examines the status of and concerns relating to community and household resources as an important component of understanding vulnerability and adaptive capacity.