Conceptual Delimitations Between Resilience, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity to Extreme Events and Global Change

Abstract

While extensively employed in the mainstream literature focused on earth system science and sustainable development, the concepts of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation are still difficult to operationalize given the different conceptual frameworks proposed in various scientific fields, such as ecology, disaster reduction and global change. Although multiple points of view are, to a certain degree, beneficial to an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the coupled human-environmental systems, there is a need to correlate the theoretical frameworks of the two sustainability pillars, resilience and vulnerability, in a coherent and efficient manner.