From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 255

a challenge that already exists, i.e. taking the chance on future benefits
that can be gained by acting now. Thus anticipation is not a new
challenge, although the reality of climate change makes it now a vital
necessity.
Furthermore, the fact that there are uncertainties around the local
impacts of climate change for the next decades does not mean that
future hazards will necessarily be new. On the contrary, and at least
for coastal areas, a number of threats brought about by climate change
will mainly exacerbate the natural hazards that in some cases have
long been hitting many territories. So there is already a certain level of
experience of past risks which can be put to use to better anticipate
future risks [DUV 14]. And as it cannot be excluded that some
territories be confronted in the future by hazards they had never or not
frequently encountered before, they could at least in part benefit from
the experience of other territories. This realization enables us to take a
step back on the issue of uncertainty and to transmit a positive
message, namely that the agents of adaptation are not entirely clueless
in the face of climate change. On the contrary, they are already
empowered with means of intervention.
Ex-ante initiatives cannot be sufficient in themselves as hazards
cannot be expected to be entirely foreseeable. A complementary
approach should therefore be initiated in parallel and it should consist
in favoring the ability of societies to respond to unpredictable natural
hazards.
6.5.2. Remaining or becoming resilient
Without going into too many terminology details of a concept that
has been studied at least since the 1970s, resilience can be defined as
the mechanism that enables a system to find some sort of balance after
having been victim of a hazard 12 . This mechanism is therefore
involved ex-post as opposed to anticipation. However it also
12 Whether the balance is that present prior to the hazard or whether it is a different
type of balance which integrates the changes initiated by the hazard. This question
remains a hot topic within the scientific community.