From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 234

Finally, the characteristics proper to the place in relation to the
groups inhabiting it, as well as the interactions between the spatially-
defined territory and its neighbors, define the ways in which the
territory is built and evolves. We are here in a logic of process, and
therefore in a dimension of timeframes . The latter is crucial for the
good understanding of the territory, whose current potential and
constraints result from socio-cultural, economic, political and
environmental changes more or less recent in time and more or less
rapid. The present is rooted in history; the vulnerability of a place
faced at any given point in time, with a hazard, is characterized by all
this temporal depth; furthermore, it varies from one scale to another
and it depends on characteristics proper both to the hazard itself and to
the territory.
6.2.2.3. Vulnerability, where hazards meet territory
When comparing the three dimensions of hazard on the one hand,
and of territory on the other, a conclusion emerges; namely that the
relation between the strengths and the limits of a territory subject to a
natural hazard, which explains the scale and nature of the impacts, is
intrinsically linked to the relations among the six variables
(Figure 6.3). The scale of the hazard for instance influences the
temporal aspects of the territory as it is expressed through a surface
impact of larger or smaller dimensions which encompasses in fact a
larger or smaller number of zones with economic activities. This in
turn affects the rhythms of the development process. As an example,
let us note that although the intensity of the tsunami wave was
stronger in India and Sri Lanka than in the Maldives, the economic
repercussions of the disaster in 2004 were proportionally less
significant in the first two countries than in the Maldivian archipelago
[COS 05, LAN 05]. There are two reasons behind this: India and Sri
Lanka have a shorter coastal strip 8 , so a priori and when respecting
all the proportions, there is a smaller exposed surface area but more
importantly, on the one hand the activities at the heart of the
economies of these two countries were not situated in the devastated
coasts and on the other hand, these countries were in relatively high
8 Ratio between the length of the coastal strip (in km) and the total surface area of the
country (in km 2 ).