From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 244

are mostly reliant on one environmental resource. In the context of a
mono-activity system, the depletion of the dominant sector through a
natural disaster cannot be compensated, even for a short while, by the
activities in another sector. In this case, and without the intervention
of an external source of help, the territory will be deprived of any
economic resources at a time in which these are most needed for the
reconstruction of its society.
A system relying on a single activity also has the second
disadvantage of offering a limited range of jobs, so that, when a
hazard occurs, it is the whole productive force of the territory which is
affected by it. The loss of jobs and the lack of new perspectives
impact the households' income and undermines their ability to recover
from a crisis. This sort of vicious circle can quickly become rooted in
the system.
The diversification of activities is not however a guarantee in itself
to lower vulnerability. These activities must also rely on the use of
different resources. Indeed, if a hazard is responsible for permanently
degrading the resource in question, the territory will find itself in a
similar situation as with the previous case, i.e. a situation where the
production system as a whole is damaged.
6.3.2.5. The political and institutional organization
The political and institutional model, and by extension the
administrative structure, here relates to the mechanisms responsible
for the operation of the territory. It expresses a priori the fact that a
territory made up of territorial units (districts for example) which are
poorly-connected will be more fragile when faced with a hazard than a
more 'coherent' environment, i.e. whose functioning also relies on the
articulation of networks 11 . The consequence of this fragility is
twofold. First, the propensity for the hazard to develop into a proper
disaster at the scale of the area affected by it, as this micro-territory
11 This is true if in parallel, the articulation of territorial components does not favor
the propagation of the consequences of a hazard from the place where the impact
occurred to the entire territory. We are touching here on the ambiguity in the
operation of network systems, in which we will not go into detail but which shows the
challenge in looking at the vulnerability of territories from a general point of view.