CLIMATRisk

The evidence of climate change and its effects, especially on coastal areas, raises concerns at all levels about the impact these events can have on human societies’ life and on possible and effective adaptations forms to be set up. The high cost in human lives caused by these extreme events highlights the unequal societies’ response capacity to deal with the risks, digging even more the existing worldwide injustices on environment: the least responsible for carbon dioxide emissions and thus for global warming, are the one who suffer the most of its effects. In the area of risks assessment related to climate change in particular to coastal hazards, vulnerability has become a central aspect of the risks analysis. Risks perception by the public is now considered as central in the overall vulnerability. Our goal is to understand the perceived vulnerability by a population exposed to the risk of coastal flooding, taking into account the various forms of vulnerability (social, institutional, economic) of territories and people. CLIMATRisk proposes to carry out a detailed analysis of risk perception by stakeholders (residents, leaders, administrators) by integrating cultural, spatial, psychosocial and psychological levels involved in its construction. It also seeks to evaluate the resources and strategies, individual and collective, implemented by individuals to adapt to coastal flooding risks, in particular the trend to the action (prevention, mitigation, protection). A comparison of two different cultural, economic and institutional contexts will allow an operationalization of these structural variables and the identification of their effect on the building of a sense of vulnerability to risk. Two fields are proposed, one in France in the department of Guadeloupe and one in Colombia, in the city of Cartagena. A multi-methodological approach will be used through a quantitative and a qualitative investigation. This comparative approach will allow the development and validation of a perceived vulnerability assessment tool and coping strategies of people and territories in situation of coastal flooding risks, which could be used in different contexts (North and South countries) and in two different languages (French and Spanish). Finally, an interdisciplinary approach: social psychology, clinical psychology, environmental psychology and geography, will allow to deal with the phenomenon of perceived vulnerability in its complexity.