Narrow Results

This paper is focused on a practice that has been widely noted in South Asia, i.e. employing extra-local methods to assess community resilience with no or minimal attempts on localising. The objective of this paper is to assess the consistency/inconsistency and concordance/discordance of resilience levels computed by different extra-local assessment methods with reference to a Sri Lankan case. Community resilience levels were computed for 40 localities with three methods utilising secondary data. Statistical analysis revealed neither strong correlation ($r\ge 0.574$), ($p<0.01$) or strong reliability (ICC $=0.481$) among the computed resilience levels, indicating inconsistency and discordance. The findings explained how the randomly selected extra-local assessment methods could produce different values. Hence, can the resilience building decisions based on such assessment methods also be inconsistent? This study suggests decision makers should revisit the practice of employing non-localised extra-local assessment methods without addressing the context-specific resilience building needs profoundly.

Enhancing resilience has become a key element of preparedness for extreme events and climate change. While much progress has been made in defining components of resilience, many questions remain about identification of appropriate strategies for building resilience, barriers to implementation of these strategies, and limits to the potential effectiveness of these efforts. New questions are also emerging about inherent limitations of resilience-based approaches, suggesting that resiliency efforts must be coupled with broader transformations of the social and political conditions that create and perpetuate vulnerabilities. Investigation of resilience options and barriers has particular resonance for urbanized coastal communities, many of which face significant climate hazards and development-related pressures and are also encountering a suite of technical, political, financial, legal, and policy hurdles to adaptation. This study explored these issues in coastal New Jersey, USA. The methodology entailed a co-production approach, whereby stakeholders and researchers collaborated in the development of climate risk and vulnerability information and identification of resilience options and barriers. The collaboration provided important insights into barriers, limits and limitations of on-going resilience-building efforts but also revealed potential openings for transformation.

The concepts “resilience” and “community” appear frequently in research on disasters associated with major society-shaping phenomena such as climate change or urbanization. The chapter seeks to explicate how social science research conceptualizes the resilient community, building on a descriptive overview of disaster studies and climate change adaptation literature. Furthermore, the chapter explores how different conceptualizations of the resilient community frame social futures amid disasters. Three key conceptualizations of resilient community arise from the literature: (i) resilient community of belonging, (ii) resilient community of practice, and (iii) resilient community as an object of governance. Patterns arising across these conceptualizations resonate with previous critiques on how a focus on resilience and communities can serve to suppress the ideas and practices of the social, in line with neoliberal politics. Yet the conceptualizations are not univocally compatible with neoliberalism and can point to a variety of social futures. Conceptualizations of the resilient community can draw attention to the self-organizing of communities, as well as illustrate how a civil society mobilizes around a cause. Ideally, the cause is in line with the interests of the disaster-affected people, who typically are also marginalized in and across societies.

In 2015 Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) ends its term after ten years of implementation. International community is involved in the Post-HFA consultation process towards a new post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction (DRR). Although HFA has proved to be effective in enhancing disaster risk reduction strategy in many fields, disaster risk is increasing. This chapter aims at evaluating how HFA has changed the way in which DRR is conceived and managed and what could be the prospective strategy for future decades. This chapter is organized in four sections. The first one contains a brief description of HFA main characteristics and innovative features. In the second section, an analysis of HFA impact during these ten years is carried out, underlining what priorities and activities have been really implemented in practice, what activities has been pervasively developed and what elements are still in need of further actions. The drivers of success or failure of HFA priorities and actions are identified and discussed. The third section is oriented to identify how risk scenario has changed during these ten years and what are the new needs and new occurrences emerged that should be considered in the future strategy for DRR. For instance, the deepening of climate change problem will not only add to the existing drivers of risk new menaces, it needs a decisive change in urban development approach: a significant increase in the extremes and their intensities needs for a transformed development paradigm. In the last section, main themes of a renewed approach to DRR are identified. Main results include: weaknesses and strengths in HFA implementation are identified; factors that appear to interfere with an integrated approach are pinpointed and discussed; emerging features of future risk scenarios are outlined; main issues of a renewed approach are illustrated.