| Summary: | This paper addresses the links between the ability to cope, vulnerability and resilience in order to contribute to the prevention of natural disasters. It is based on an investigation realized in 2016 in Port-de-Prince on the earthquake of January 2010. If scientific literature and professionals frequently refer to « coping capacities », the term is rarely defined and most likely not/never formalized. Notwithstanding, vulnerability reduction and resilience upgrade are often associated to coping capacities. This statement not only raises a theoretical problem but also an operational issue: the impossibility to define actions to build up, improve, reinforce capacities to face hazards and/or natural disasters. Hence, the paper aims to establish how these capacities can exist and rise, how they are used by individuals and what are the conditions needed for their full expression. We assumed here that coping capacities are related to capabilities, as defined by A. Sen and M. Nussbaum. Applied to resilience, the capabilities will not only designate personal abilities to cope to make it out, to get up and build back better. These will also display resources which allow the activation of these same capacities or, if applicable, to compensate for their absence. The necessity to take into account what we call the « context capabilitaire » to understand (and reduce) the resilience of vulnerabilities is undeniable.
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