From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 254

consists of maintaining a maximum of room for manoeuvre so as to
always be able to readjust the development choices made as
knowledge progresses. In other words, societies not only have to be
sufficiently solid to project their development strategies over time but
they should also be flexible enough to be able to readjust these
strategies. So the notion of flexibility is central and it relies on two
approaches to the future which complement each other: anticipation
and resilience [MAG 13]. In theory, the first approach refers to the
ability of a society to project itself into the future, whereas the second
refers to the ability of societies to increase their response capability
when faced with relatively unpredictable hazards.
6.5.1. Anticipating for adaptation
Anticipation is the most common dimension of adaptation to
climate change. It refers to the long term and to the ability of
imagining and initiating responses ahead of the problems. The time
horizons of 2030, 2050 and even 2100 are often evoked as they
correspond to timesteps in climate model simulations, and as they are
deadlines for which it is thought that it is necessary and desirable to
think about fighting climate change impacts. Moreover, any society
needs time to change its consumption patterns, its spatial planning, its
relation to the environment, etc. Making the way our systems function
evolve in a few decades involves setting changes in motion now, or in
other words, anticipating.
One of the main questions raised is that of the ability of political
leaders, economic stakeholders, local organizations and populations to
address uncertainty around future climate change impacts. How to
prepare for something that cannot be clearly identified? The question
raises many challenges but we must also remember that climate
change-related uncertainty is only part of the problem. Indeed, climate
change will act in parallel with other drivers of change: economic
trends, changes in geo-political relations, fashion phenomena, other
natural hazards (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc.), the
widening of socio-economic inequalities, etc. However, the latter are
also surrounded by uncertainties. So uncertainties associated to
climate simulations, before bringing up new questions, first reinforce