The project proposes to correlate an analysis of adaptation strategies of coastal societies facing climate change with a vulnerability analysis of communities potentially exposed to this kind of risk.

Sites to study will be chosen on Brittany coast, an iconic space of complex relations between societies and coastline, concerned by both sea level rise and the inverse progression of human settlements to the sea (Meur-Ferec, Morel, 2004).

The project associates different disciplines and relies upon innovative achievements in researches devoted to hazards and human vulnerability from the perspective of resiliency.

Favoring the approach by a specific environment, the coastline, the research aims to create a reference or a common language between different teams.

We propose to focus our analysis on two dimensions of risk vulnerability: hazard and perception. These two elements are the most academically distant from a disciplinary point of view: geomorphology, sociology, social geography. We aim to implement a real extended interdisciplinarity (Jollivet, 1992) between naturalist and social approaches. A part of the team has already successfully realized such a constructive “diversity” (PNEC, 2004; ANR VMC, 2008). It makes management of coastal risks more effective. Since one of the conclusions drawn by previous works is that if vulnerability obviously depends on natural phenomena (storms, submersion but also cyclones or earthquakes…), we cannot try to reduce it without considering perception of involved populations (D’Ercole and Pigeon, 2000).

Adaptation public policies will be more effective and coherent through the integration of these fundamental elements of society’s vulnerability to climate change.

Results expected in terms of environment management:

The cooperation between teams will allow developing new approaches to evaluate answers of coastal systems to climate change. The issue of coastal answers is crucial in order to identify not only vulnerabilities and challenges but above all the most suitable adaptation’s strategies.