From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 256

intervenes in the process of adaptation. Indeed developing or
maintaining the ability to respond to an unpredictable event remains a
topical challenge as climate variability, which accounts for the
occurrence of extreme events, will necessarily act in combination with
climate change as such 13 [BER 07]. So reinforcing our ability to
'digest' crises that will never cease to occur is a key-objective of the
resilience pillar. There again, our current experience can be useful as
natural hazards which are very similar to future hazards are already
taking place. So the adaptation challenge consists of projecting the
capacity or lack thereof of a territory to be resilient in the future.
Scientific studies are already teaching us that resilience relies
principally on the consolidation of spatial coherence and social
cohesion, on the improvement of living conditions (accommodation,
health, food, etc.) and more generally on the conditions of
development (education, public policies, employment, etc.), and
finally on a better preservation/conservation of natural environments
and their biodiversity (ecosystem services among others). This brings
us back to the influencing factors of vulnerability previously described
and, here again, the aim is to solidify the basic characteristics of
territories without freezing them. The flexibility imperative
re-emerges: as the distant future cannot be predicted with certainty, a
promising strategy consists of being capable of responding “in real
time”; yet, a certain level of flexibility in the operation of a system
affects its way to respond, and in time, its ability to show resilience.
6.5.3. The overlap between anticipation and resilience
As the mechanism of resilience consists of the response to a hazard
and as it is part of a short- to medium-term dimension, resilience is a
reaction to the gaps in the anticipation mechanism. The latter indeed
does not act in response to a hazard and is established over medium to
long timescales. Conversely, the anticipation logic fills the gaps in the
13 Globally, climate change characterizes the evolution of the climate's parametric
means (at the scale of several decades), whereas climate variability characterize
changes in these parameters around a mean. Both phenomena can therefore be
combined.