Buletinul Societii de Geografie din Romnia, serie nou, tom XII (XXCII), Ed. Societii de Geografie, Bucureti, pp.

129-142, ISSN 1582-3962 THE CONCEPTS OF VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE USED IN NATURAL RISKS ANALYSIS by Iulian Ctlin STNG, Constantin RUSU Universitatea Al.I.Cuza Iai Rsum: On a fait dans larticle ci-dessous une analyse critique de certains concepts extrmement importants dans ltude des risques (naturels et humains), mais insuffisamment connus et employs seulement dune manire sequentielle dans la littrature gographique. La vulnerabilit reprsente un concept essentiel, tant une caractristique des lments susceptibles dtre affects par un certain processus ou phnomne potentiel destructif, soit il dune manifestation violente ou graduelle. La rsilience dfinit la capacit dun systme de neutraliser les dsquilibres apparrus par la consommation du risque, le systme maintenant ses traits structuraux et fonctionnels par ses propres moyens dautoreglage. Ces mcanismes rsultent de la qualit des components systmiques (ressources naturelles, ressources financires, capital humain), la qualit et la dimmension des relations qui lui assurent la fonctionnalit. La sensitivit reprsente la capacit dun systme de modifier ses attributs et de sadapter un nouvel tat dquilibre, diffrent de ltat prcdent. Key words: concepts, vulnerability, resilience, sensitivity, natural risks Vulnerability represents an essential concept in the analysis of natural risks, representing a feature of the elements susceptible of being affected by a phenomena or process of destructive potential, whether of a violent or latent manifestation. Etymologically, the word derives from Latin, from the verb vulnero, -are, with a meaning of to hurt, the usual sense being that of susceptibility of being hurt or attacked. Vulnerability is a multidimensional concept whose definitions illustrate the variety of viewpoints that have given attention either to the degree of exposure, either to the economic context or to the access to resources, or to social investigations (UNEP, 2002). It gathers together the characteristics of an individual or of a social group, or of the situation they are into, characteristics that may influence the capacity of anticipating, of coping with and of recovering from the impact of a natural disaster (Wisner, 2005). In this view, other authors have given more concise definitions, yet underlying the fact that the ability of an individual or of a society of recovering from the impact of extreme phenomena must be analyzed both on a short and long term, thus integrating vulnerability in the studies that desire sustainable development. The concept is also used in a larger frame and may be defined as representing the susceptibility of a functional system (not only anthropic) to be affected by a certain internal or external factor that may cause a disequilibrium in that system. Iano (2000) defines vulnerability as being the degree of internal reception of the external interventions or of the internal accidents and Mac et al. (2002) define it as the susceptibility of the social and bio-physical systems to suffer damage at an individual and/or collective level. Thus the analysis of vulnerability implies the explanation of the differentiated losses caused at the same magnitude of a certain hazard, the evaluation of the capacity of a given system to adsorb (neutralize) the impact of the disasters at the same time with maintaining its functionality, as well as the determination of the optimum measures needed to minimize the effects of the disasters. We must held in mind the fact that there are natural geomorphic, hydrologic, climatic phenomena that do not represent but spatial-temporal segments of a normal dynamics, through which the geosystem has always evolved, and only through the interference of the natural systems with the anthropic ones does this vulnerability become functional, by risk occurrence. In this idea, the use of the term vulnerability in phrases such as slope vulnerability to landslides leads only to the betrayal of the so characteristic pragmatism of the modern mans psychology. Landslides are processes of a destructive potential for human settlements, communication routes, agricultural terrains and so on, fact

that shows us that society is vulnerable to such processes that represent a part of the slope and morphological evolution as a whole. Thus, the approaches follow the slopes susceptibility to landslides and the vulnerability of the social structures to this. So the point of view that we adopt in the analysis becomes very important: nature itself is vulnerable, and many times man is the perturbing factor: pollutants input into atmosphere is an extremely suggestive example. Still a question occurs: what is the limit of our vulnerability to the different nature feedbacks and where from does nature itself become vulnerable? In what measure the vulnerability of a certain culture does not reflect the vulnerability of the human communities that benefit from that culture? Analyzing the evolution of the agricultural systems we may easily observe the fact that man has always paid special attention to the intervention on the hydrological, climatic, soil and geomorphologic feedbacks only when the intervention was clearly necessary and profitable from the economic point of view, as he later interfered even in the genetic modification of crops. Humans have acted only when and because they felt vulnerable to different potential disequilibria, permanently modifying the tolerance limits of the social-economic systems due to the ever growing internal pressures generated by population growth. The factors that determine vulnerability differ according to the geographical, social, economical context and the typology of the analyzed hazards. The factors determining the vulnerability to drought of the rural communities from the arid and semiarid regions of Africa wont be the same as those that the vulnerability to floods or storms of the strongly industrialized regions such as Norway. If in the first case the isolation and poverty may be the determinant factors of vulnerability, in the second essential may be the quality of infrastructure and the structure of land use (Brooks et al., 2005). The small rural settlements from Tutuvas High Hills, mainly with a rural population that practices a subsistence agriculture of a strongly self-sufficing character are much more vulnerable to the climatic risks that the population concentrated in the nearby towns. Yet this second population, concentrated in blocks of flats built of concrete casts is much more vulnerable to seismic risk than that of the rural settlements with houses built of air-dried clay bricks. In what regards the exposure degree, it is quite evident that the settlements located in the major riverbeds are much more vulnerable to floods than those located on the connecting glacises. Thus, vulnerability is characterized by different spatial dimensions and a rigorous scientific approach may be conducted only through a differentiated analysis and its spatial integration. Different international organisms even define vulnerability according to the area and purpose of the research, fact that illustrates the relativity of the concept. United Nations World Food Programme and Food and Agricultural Organization define vulnerability by taking into consideration the factors that determine the incertitude of the food resources for different human communities. The Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change defines vulnerability as being the level to which a certain social or natural system is capable of sustaining the damages provoked by the climatic changes. The variability of the causal factors, the connections that are established between them and their role determine a evolution in time of vulnerability, that together with the territorial diversity imposes more precise analyses than at the level of a certain system, in a certain time period, and reported to a certain hazard. There are still a series of factors of general character that may influence the degree of vulnerability in any geographical, social, economic or politic context, and with no regard to the nature of hazard: the extant technical and economical level, the healthiness of the individuals or the functionality of a well designed social system etc. According to these aspects several types of vulnerability can be defined: social, economical, political, cultural etc. The economical vulnerability is determined by the lack of resource access and it has a large action and impact sphere, especially if we have in view the fact that the existence of a functional economy may condition and assure the functionality of some proper medical and educational services, may allow investments in the creation of a sufficient and safe locative fund, for the creation of a infrastructure that would allow the functioning of each sub-system. UNEP (2002), in the approach of economical vulnerability, insists on those factors of negative, destructive potential on the development level and on economical growth, factors that include the structure and dimensioning of the economical activities, the geographical constraints or the exposure to different environmental risks. At an individual level, the existence of financial resources may assure the access to food and different existent services in a certain society, contributing to the diminishment of vulnerability. Even if there is an extremely close connection between them, vulnerability and poverty cannot be confused:

all poor people are vulnerable to hazards, but all vulnerable people are not necessarily poor. Poverty represents the lack of access to the resources that are essential for a normal economical, social or even physiologic life, while vulnerability has a more comprising sphere. The relation between vulnerability and poverty may be very easily evidenced through a comparative analysis of the effects of natural disasters. The existence of financial resources allows the construction of safe settlements even in risk areas, while poverty forces you to construct or occupy unsafe settlements from marginal areas, usually more exposed to different hazards (slopes susceptible to landslides, major riverbeds). The lack of communication means or of a transport infrastructure in the poor areas prevents on the one side warnings, and on the other rescue missions, situation that does not occur in the wealthy societies. Comparing the impact of landslides in the residential areas from the region of the Topanga canyon (near Los Angeles, USA) and those from the poor peripheries of the Brazilian metropolis Rio de Janeiro, Blaikie et al. (1994) have shown that for the wealthy persons from the LA region occupying areas of a high susceptibility to landslide is a voluntary action, while for the poor persons from Brazil this behavior is a necessity. More, the impact of the disasters manifests strongly differentiated, having in mind that the belongings of the wealthy persons from LA are insured, while those of the poor persons from Rio de Janeiro are not, the later having all their earnings in the affected properties. The economical vulnerability practically reflects itself and on other types of vulnerability, and thus the taxonomical analysis of the vulnerable groups is as common and useful as that of the typology of vulnerability (Wisner, 2005), from an economical viewpoint or from a social, psychological or physiologic one. For example, from the victims of the December 2004 tsunami from Sri Lanka and India, almost a third were children, and this firstly because of their high proportion in the area, and second because of the impossibility of them saving through their own forces. Very vulnerable, incapable of resisting alone to the post-disaster period are the children that have lost a part or all their family. Vulnerable categories from this point of view may be easily found and in our geographical space, by reporting to certain natural hazards of annual frequency: most of the victims caused by extreme temperatures (strong frosts or heat) belong to the third age. Besides, poverty contributes to the overexploitation of natural resources without the possibility of applying some protection measures, situation that leads many times to the accentuation of the constraints imposed by the environment and to the increase in frequency and magnitude of the disasters (Segnestam, 2004). The very low life level, the wish for fast thriving on the background of legislation un-functionalities and the lack of ecological education are the factors that have determined the massive deforestations from our country from the last 15 years, with impact in the triggering and acceleration of slope processes, stimulation of surface runoff and the increase of the frequency and magnitude of the floods (the Trotu Basin is an eloquent example from this point of view). Cutter et al. (2001) separate three types of vulnerability: individual, social and biophysical. The individual vulnerability represents the susceptibility of a person or a structure of being affected by a certain hazard (the vulnerability of a building to earthquakes, vulnerability of a dam, vulnerability of a person, etc.). The social vulnerability is situated on a different scale, being defined by the demographic characteristics of the social groups, which influence the groups susceptibility to be affected by a certain hazard; at the same level are analyzed all the groups features (social, economical, administrative, political, historical etc.). If individual vulnerability enters mainly the interest sphere of the engineering, natural sciences and medicine scientists and practicians, the social vulnerability is mainly analyzed by specialists from sociology, demography, economy. The biophysical vulnerability represents in fact the fragility or physical exposure of a certain individual / group to hazards. By integrating social vulnerability with biophysical vulnerability we arrive, in our opinion, to the concepts of territory and territoriality, because no analysis of a group may take place outside the space it evolves in and which it has taken control of (the territory representing the symbiosis of the geographical space with society). Vulnerability is generally considered to be the resultant of two or three elements: the degree of exposure and the sum of intrinsic characteristics that determine the capacity of resisting certain hazards (Brooks et al., 2005) or the degree of exposure, the sensitivity and the resilience (Folke et al., 2002, Segnestam, 2004). Another similar point of view may be found at Pelling (2003, cited by Klein, 2004), who, analyzing individual vulnerability, separates it into three components: exposure,

resistance and resilience. The degree of exposure implies the over-imposing of the socio-economical factors with those favoring hazards. Some authors consider that such an approach that implies the analysis of resilience as a component of vulnerability leads to the unjustified idea of an antinomy between vulnerability and resilience (Klein, 2004). In our opinion, a separation of vulnerability into the three mentioned elements does not imply at all an antagonism between vulnerability and its components. On contrary, vulnerability implies the analysis of the states existent previous of the disequilibria occurrence, while the approach of resilience implies the analysis of the situations synchronous and ulterior to the hazard, even if between these there is a causal relationship. The problem that might arise at a conceptual level is that of exposure as a component part of vulnerability. All the processes taking place in a certain space and period of time represent a reference system (of coordinates) that cannot be assimilated to elements, features, processes. Yet, spatial analysis implies on one side societys exposure degree, and on the other the analysis of the situational factors that favor different natural disequilibria (hazards). The term of resilience is defined in the Larousse Dictionary as being the mechanical characteristic of materials of resisting to different external shocks, and has been used firstly with this meaning. Only from the beginning of the 70s the concept has been used metaphorically to describe systems that confront with different perturbing factors and that roam varied periods of disequilibrium, having the capacity of resisting and coming back to the original status (Klein et al, 2003). The use of this notion has later been enlarged, and in relatively recent approaches it entered a lot of study fields, from engineering sciences to ecology, environmental studies, psychology, sociology, economy etc. In ecology, the term is frequently used, most of the times being interpreted as a measure of the ecosystems ability of persisting in time by adsorbing changes; resilience is thus set into contrast with stability, that represents the capacity of ecosystems of returning to a previous status through different processes of reorganization, which develop during a disequilibrium stage (Holling, 1973). At the same time, resilience has been defined by the rapidity with which an ecosystem comes back to its initial status after a period of disequilibrium (Pimm, 1984) or by relation to the magnitude of a perturbing event with whom a certain system can cope with without changing its structure or functionality (Carpenter et al., 2001). The concept is very frequently considered a key element in the sustainable management of ecosystems, while biodiversity contributes to the increase of the ecosystems resilience, stability and functionality (Peterson, 1998, Chapin, 2000). From ecology, this notion has been transferred in the social field to describe the behavioral answer of individuals, communities, social institutions or even economies confronted with different disequilibria. In psycho-sociology the term is usually used to define the individual ability to cope with crisis situations, including the acquiring of experience to answer such stress factors. The value of resilience is considered as resulting from the proportion that is established between the risk factors (singular or successive, individual or environmental) and the protection factors (moral or financial support etc). Resilience has a special value during transition, stress accumulation periods, that may include also unexpected events, outside the individual (natural disasters, losing the job, poverty); these events impose the increase in the ability to get through them, so as to maintain a positive attitude (psychic, attitudinal or compartmental). In an equal measure, resilience has been considered not only a state, but also a process of physical and emotional adaptation of the individual. Neither the spiritual dimension of resilience, resulting from the help and trust that the belonging to a certain religion can offer (as a source of hope, optimism and trust into the values of life) has not been ignored. In the socio-economical system, the concept of resilience has been associated with sustainable development (Common, 1995, cited by Klein, 2004) and exploited inclusively in the analysis of natural or man induced hazards, through numerous interdisciplinary studies that regard the relations between nature and society. The anthropic and natural systems interfere to a large extent, and their resilience results mainly from the dynamics and dimension of the interactive relations that confer the system functionality, the stability of the components, somehow relative, playing a secondary role. The importance of the resilience concept in the studies regarding sustainable development explains the occurrence of the Resilience Alliance in 1999, an organization of the scientists and practicians from different fields that pursues the research of the dynamics of socio-ecological systems. In this organizational and research frame a special attention is paid to adaptative capacity as an element of resilience (Carpenter et al., 2001). Other authors consider adaptive capacity as being in fact

influenced by resilience and defining the ability of realizing intervention plans and of implementing technical measures before, during and after the manifestation of the extreme events; the adaptive capacity is thus considered to be influenced by resilience (Klein et al. 2003). In the problematic of the natural risks, ISDR defines resilience as being the capacity of a system, community or society of resisting or modifying itself to acquire an acceptable functional and structural level. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of selforganization and by its ability to increase its capacity of learning and adapting, including the capacity of recovering after a disaster. At the same time, the investments in the natural risks management with the purpose of reducing disasters are considered to be a necessity obligatory in the improvement of life standards and safety conditions, for the protection against hazards and the increase in the resilience of different communities. This situation implies the efficient management of natural resources that could lead to the increase in resilience against disasters by stopping environmental degradation. In our opinion, resilience defines the capacity of a system to neutralize the disequilibria occurred through risk consuming, the system maintaining its structural-functional characteristics by methods of self adjustment. These self-adjusting methods result in the quality of the systemic components (natural resources, financial resources, human capital) and the quality and dimension of the interactive relations that may assure its functionality. The natural resources (geological, hydrologic, soil, climatic potential, forest) are essential for survival and implicitly for coping with disasters. The lack of such natural resources or the environmental degradation through the inadequate use of the existent resources (overexploitation or polluting techniques) generate two problems instead of one: the deterioration, diminishment or even exhaustion of natural resources, but also the decrease of societys capacity of coping with disasters. The financial resources (incomes, belongings, credits) no doubt increase the capacity and speed of recovery of certain affected individuals or groups of individuals. This is the motive for which both nongovernmental organizations and governmental programs take into account compensations, material or financial support so to assure reconstruction after disasters. The human capital (education, health, physical abilities or habits etc.) plays an important role in increasing individual resilience. The poorly developed countries from sub-Saharan Africa are characterized for example by a human capital strongly affected by the diffusion of the HIV virus or by the poor degree of educational training. The social capital (reciprocity, trust, feeling of belonging to a certain group) implies and includes communication and reciprocal help, inclusively the existence of a social reciprocal help system organized at a state level. The homogeneous communities are those characterized by an increased resilience with regards to the divided communities, because of the possibility of realizing a consent and cooperating in the reconstruction activities. The physical capital includes the existence of adequate shelters, buildings, units of water or food alimentation, of transport and communication. The existence of hospitals in the risk areas increases the resilience of those areas communities. From this point of view, there is a strong relation between resilience and the level of socio-economical development (Garatwa et al., 2002).

Figure 1. Resilience and economical development (after Garatwa et al., 2002)

Dovers et al. (1992) makes a distinction between reactive and proactive resilience of a society confronted with different hazards. Reactive resilience implies that a certain group is strengthening its present system so as to cope with the induced changes, while proactive resilience implies the creation of a new system capable of adapting to the new conditions and constraints. Thus the sphere of this notion is highly enlarged, implying the capacity of anticipating, preventing or creating intervention systems for crisis situations. More, there appears a superposition between the concept of resilience (proactive resilience) and that of sensitivity. This view may still be perfectly adaptable in the approach of the natural risks, indifferently if we talk about the analysis of the individual or of the society confronted with hazards. Pelling (2003, cited by Klein, 2004) considers resilience as being the capacity of an individual/group to cohabit and adapt to the stress imposed by a certain hazard, including in the notion and the preparing measures taken under the menace of a potential hazard. Thus along the time there has been a passage from engineering resilience, that results from the intrinsic properties of certain material systems, to a much more comprising ecologic and socioeconomic concept, that implies certain mechanisms of self-adjustment, reorganization, between certain structural-functional limits. The interpretation of the resilience concept cannot be done without knowing the tolerance limits of the different analyzed systems, through the analysis of the limits that transform the functional disequilibria into dysfunctional disequilibria, in correlation with the existence of own self-adjustment mechanisms. All these things practically translate the different relations between nature and society, inclusively during their extreme manifestations. The use of the resilience concept is in most cases a purely theoretical one, without the existence of an effectively operational side, of implementation and use in the disaster management or in the studies of sustainable development. Even if the numerous existent studies have approached different perspectives of the ecological, social and institutional resilience, we dot not have yet a set of indicators that would determine the resilience value of a certain community. Sensitivity represents the capacity of a system of modifying its attributes or adapting to a new equilibrium state, different from the previous one. If resilience defines the capacity of the system of coming back to the equilibrium previous to a perturbing event by own self-adjusting means, sensitivity implies its capacity of acquiring a new state, of recalibrating the qualitative or quantitative parameters of its components, and implicitly its functionality in new conditions. Both resilience and sensitivity are more or less dependent on the vulnerability of the systems in view, although the inverse relation is also viable: more a system is capable of acquiring a certain experience and adapting to a new equilibrium state, more lower becomes its vulnerability. The dimension of the human vulnerability (as a whole) was characterized through an ascendant evolution, despite the technico-scientific progress; the way in which the vulnerability factors have cooperated during history, especially during the medieval, modern and contemporaneous periods, as well as their spatial differentiation, explain the differences approached from the viewpoint of disasters. A careful analysis of the world situation from this viewpoint shows the fact that especially where progress penetrated less, the vulnerability factors are more active. At the same time, population growth and the increased pressure over land has imposed the occupation of spaces of a high natural vulnerability, and the relations between the socio-economical, technical and military forces have led to a present situation where the poorer, less developed societies occupy the territories most pregnant exposed to risks. Exceptions are not unique, and probably the happiest example is that of the Japanese society, that assimilated a territory strongly exposed to hazards. The inventory of the technologies used for the manipulation of natural variables implies the manifestation of new hazards during the attempts of mastering the existent ones. Technico-scientific progress, urbanization and industrialization are accompanied by global pollution problems that increase on the one side the fragility of geosystemic equilibriums and on the other the vulnerability of the whole human society. In these conditions we may appreciate the fact that after thousands of years of fighting against nature and trying to know and master its forces and resources, society is nowadays faced with fighting against problems generated or accelerated by its own activities. Statistics show extremely clear that the impact of disasters (victim number, wounded, material losses etc.) is increasingly high, and between the factors that play an important role in this sense we must remind the population growth with its distinct spatial consequences and manifestations, urbanization and the socio-economical and cultural differentiations, the modern techniques with still unknown indirect implications, the politico-military games, etc.

The globes population has reached at the middle of 2005 6.447 billion people1, from which 5.266 billion (81.68 %) live in under developed and developing countries (including China). After hundreds of years in which the numerical fluctuations of population have accompanied a very low increase, during only a hundred years the population has reached from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000, generating an aggressive assault on the natural resources, especially the agricultural ones and in the poorly developed countries. The alert and continuous growth of population in the underdeveloped or developing countries highly exceeds the economical growth and the capacity of the authorities of investing and assuring a proper level of public services (especially education, health, habitation, transport etc.) or of creating an adequate social system. Thus nowadays more than half of the worlds population lives under the poverty limit (accepted worldwide as being 2 dollars/day), fact that certainly limits the individuals possibility of preparing and reacting in the case of different disasters. The most serious problems of this kind are met in sub-Saharan Africa and in the centralsouthern part of Asia, where 75% of the population lives under the limit of poverty, extremely difficult situations being in Uganda, Nigeria and Mali, with a percentage of 90%. In sub-Saharan Africa, from 1950, the population growth has exceeded economical growth, agricultural productions, the evolution of the educational and health systems, and the pressure on natural resources (mainly water and soil) has very much been increased. Even in the conditions of a some progress in a few states (the growth of the cotton production in Mali, of the milk production in Kenya) and their economical implications, these could not compensate the consuming (not even a minimal one) due to its much more rapid growth. The practicing of an insufficient agriculture, without applying economical or ecological principles, deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, lead to the vulnerability of these communities to a series of natural hazards, especially floods and drought, situation extremely severe having in mind the fact that almost 60% of the less developed states population lives in the rural area (91 % in Burundi, 88 % in Uganda, 87 % in Lesotho, 86 % in Malawi; 85 % in Ethiopia, 83 % in Rwanda). The attempts of implementing an intensive, productive, agriculture in some countries of the Third World have brought other problems, because the creation of huge water reservoirs for these intensive systems has determined the decrease of the reserves in the neighboring areas that lacked investment possibilities, as well as the disturbance of the nutritive cycles that the great rivers flooding usually sustained (Smith, 1996). Overpopulation imposed the necessity of an irrigated agriculture on very large surfaces, fact that increased the risk of exhausting or diminishing the aquifer reserves. In China, the extended irrigations from the Great Plain have determined the decrease of the phreatic level with almost 1.5 meters per year, especially in its northern part (Brown, 1999). In India, country that has already exceeded 1 billion inhabitants, the situation is even more severe, due to the accentuated reduction of irrigation water. Water quantity extracted from aquifers is double than their regenerating capacity, thus almost everywhere in this state the aquifers decrease annually with 1-3 m (Brown, 1999). The anthropic pressure from such countries and the burden of poverty have alimented and still aliment international fluxes towards the developed areas, where the solving of the immigrants economical problems implies new risks, of social nature, related to the integration possibilities from the host country. Yet, the accentuated population growth, especially in the rural area, associated with accentuated poverty, determines an extremely consistent flux towards the urban areas. Urbanization represents an essential factor of the economical progress, that facilitates the attempts of ameliorating the educational or health level of the population, and the present situation from different world regions does nothing but confirm this thing (higher life level, more efficient education and health services, lower birth rate etc.). The concentration of financial resources from the urban areas assures support for expertise, prevention plans, the improvement of the intervention institutions etc. At the same time, the alert urbanization from many poorly developed countries only represents a massive population concentration, without assuring specific urban facilities, fact than increases the risk factor from such urbanized areas, through concentration of poverty and the faster dispersal of certain diseases (through the higher incidence of those of sexual transmittance or of those due to air or water pollution in the urban area, through alcohol or drugs abuse etc). at the same time, although
1

World Population Data Sheet, 2005, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, USA

migration towards the urban environment is realized most of the times in the view of a supplementary earning needed for supporting families, these migrations often undermine the family and social relations (translated into the support offered to younger, older or sick persons), also a severe fact in the situation of lack of social protection programs (Kent et al., 2005). Urbanization in the Third World includes the concentration of population in buildings of a low degree of anti-seismic protection. In some states, an important percentage of the rural urban migration has been conducted towards towns of a high seismic risk, due to both tectonic fragility and to building vulnerability (Torry, 1980, cited by Smith, 1996). All these aspects explain the importance of vulnerability in the analysis of the natural risks, any paradigm of them being based on the interpretation of social and economical systems vulnerability against hazards. Smith (1996) identifies two paradigms of hazards: the behavioral paradigm and the structural one. The behavioral paradigm has been developed in the ecological approach of hazards, in the first part of the 20th century, under the influence of the American geographical school and of Gilbert Whites papers. It gives an extremely important role to the attitude and actions taken by society to anticipate and prevent different natural catastrophes, exclusively due to natures extreme manifestations. The structural paradigm has been developed after 1975, especially under the influence of anthropologists or different scientists that have worked fro the development of the countries from the Third World, as a reaction to the unsuccessfulness registered in the solving of the problems from this area. This approach implies a Marxist interpretation of the natural hazards and disasters, through the idea of capital redistribution (material, financial, social), so as to assure the access to resources of all the social groups. Selective bibliography: Blaikie .a. (1994) At risks: natural hazards, peoples vulnerability and disasters, Routledge, London Brooks N. (2003) Vulnerability, risk and adaptation: a conceptual framework, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Working paper no. 38, 16 pp. Brooks N., Adger W.N., Kelly P.M. (2005) The determinants of vulnerability and adaptive capacity at the national level and the implications for adaptation, Global Environmental Change, 15, pp.151 - 163 Brown. L. - coord. (1999) Probleme globale ale omenirii. Starea lumii/1999, Ed. Tehnic Bucureti, 304 pp. Carpenter S., Walker B., Andries J.M., Abel N. (2001) From Metaphor to Measurement: Resilience of What to What?, Ecosystems, 4, pp. 765 - 781 Chappin F.S. et al. (2000) Consequences of changing biodiversity, Nature, vol. 405, no. 11, pp. 234 - 242 Dovers S.R., Handmer J.V. (1992) Uncertainty, Sustainability and Change, Global Environmental Change 2 (4), pp. 262 - 276 Garatwa W., Bollin Christine (2002) Diasaster Risk Management. Working Concept, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn, Germania, 48 pp. Holling C.S. (1973) - Resilience and stability of ecological systems, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, no. 4, pp. 1 - 23 Iano I. (1994) Riscul n sistemele geografice, SCC, XLI, Ed. Academiei, Bucureti Iano I. (2000) Sisteme teritoriale. O abordare geografic, Ed. Tehnic, Bucureti, 197 pp. Kent M. Mary, Haub C. (2005) Global Demographic Divide, Population Bulletin, vol. 60, nr.4, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, 24 pp Klein J.T. Richard, Nicholls J. Robert, Thomalla Frank (2003) Resilience to natural hazards: How useful is this concept?, Environmental Hazards, no. 5, pp. 35 45 Elsevier Peterson G., Allen R. C., Holling C.S. (1998) Ecological Resilience, Biodiversity and Scale, Ecosystems, 1, pp. 6 - 18 Pimm S.L. (1984) The Complexity and Stability of Ecosystems, Nature, 307, pp. 321 - 326 Segnestam L. (2004) - Poverty and Vulnerability to Environmental Stress: Working with Multiple Dimensions of Poverty. SEI Briefing Note, Poverty and Vulnerability Programme, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Suedia, august 2004, 3 pp.

Smith K. (1996) Environmental hazards. Assessing risk and reducing disaster, Editia a doua Routledge London, 389 pp. Stng I. C. (2004) Riscul natural - ntre hazard i catastrof, Lucrrile Seminarului geografic Dimitrie Cantemir Iai, nr. 23-24, pp. 57-64 UNEP (2002) Assessing Human Vulnerability due to Environmental Change: Concepts, Issues, Methods and Case Studies, UNEP/DEWA/RS.03-5 Wisner B. (2005) Tracking Vulnerability: History, Use, Potential and Limitations of a Concept, Structures of Vulnerability: Mobilisation and Research, Research Conference, Stockholm, 12 14 ianuarie 2005 Zvoianu I., Dragomirescu . (1994) Asupra terminologiei folosite n studiul fenomenelor naturale extreme, Studii i cercetri de Geografie, XLI, pp. 59 65 *** EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database, Universit Catholique de Louvain - Brussels - Belgium