From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 228

the process of identifying pragmatic strategies to reduce risks a lot
more complex [WIS 04]. This is true firstly as the number of variables
to consider has been increased (with an addition of variables of
different natures), then as it requires the consideration of both the
interactions among these variables and their respective latencies.
Indeed, although the impacts of a hazard are first and foremost
direct impacts (human losses, various damage, breaking of networks,
etc.), they can also expand over time following the domino principle
[DAU 07, PRO 07], thereby extending the 'lifespan' of a disaster.
This is all the more true in the context of climate change, which
compels us to take time into account (gradual risks and related
uncertainties). By reducing the timescale, it can be noted that the
vulnerability of a given space plays an important role in the way the
consequences of a disaster unfold. Indeed, the nature of this type of
vulnerability is twofold: it first touches on the fragility (environmental
and/or human) of a system faced with a hazard, and then on the
capacity of this system to absorb the crisis and find a balance after it is
over (concept of resilience ). Fragility can be used to explain the most
direct impacts, whereas resilience is used to understand the impacts
that occur through the domino effect. So how can resilience be
analyzed without integrating the various interactions among
the components of the society in question on one side, and between
the society and its environment on the other? The relevance of this
question is based on the mutuality paradigm which forces us to adopt
a systemic and dynamic vision of the human/environment relationship
and therefore of risks, vulnerability and hazards. In terms of the
analysis, vulnerability needs to be considered as the result of both
endogenous and exogenous influences [DUV 14, FUS 06], which the
structural paradigm failed to specify; whereas the level of
vulnerability needs to be understood as evolving in time.
A relatively well-thought through definition of vulnerability
emerged at the beginning of the 21st Century as a consensus was
reached among researchers from around the world united within the
IPCC 3 on the issue of climate change. The report explicitly refers to
the human/nature interface and to relationships among humans. In the
3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - www.ipcc.ch.