Have something to say?
Join LinkedIn for free to participate in the conversation. When you join, you can comment and post your own discussions.
Is "resilience" merely a new term for "sustainable"? Or am I being over simplistic?
I couldn't help but feel that defining something as "resilient" is not that much different to "sustainable". Are job specifications now going to use the term "resilient capacity building" as a criteria for selection? I'm sure that much of the discussion will centre around the meaning of the two terms, but I suspect that the difference will be similar to splitting hairs.
Over to you readers - I seek enlightenment.
Yvonne V., Aminata C. like this
You, Yvonne V., Aminata C. like this
4 comments
Mark
Mark D. • Russell, When I began my international career, I applied my degrees and training in watershed management and soil and water conservation to activities that were under the programmatic umbrella of sustainable development. The world was a much more stable place then, or at least that’s how it was treated. Back then, an important element in achieving sustainability was to incorporate safeguards in the administration of the activity to the beneficiaries, in order to avoid their confidence in the “new and improved” system being destroyed by a setback, albeit a minor one.
With the recognition of climate change, the increase in conflicts around the globe, and the increasing frequency, severity and tolls of disasters, it has become even more important to be prepared for a setback. I think it is important to show that one’s efforts in building a sustainable system includes Plans B, C, and D (and even more if you work someplace like the DRC). This is the resilience factor that is so prominent. As the saying goes, “Plan for worst and hope for the best.”
Another factor that comes into play is that people don’t seem to want to accept death anymore. Plagues, malnutrition and catastrophes used to provide periodic “corrections” of uncontrolled population growth. Governments and organizations felt these mechanisms were a hindrance to prosperity and began putting health programs in place that reduced mortality rates. However, they did not calculate into their predictive equation that the increased populations would have to depend on the finite, and increasingly limited, resource base on the planet. Their immediate goals at that time of preserving life did not consider the longer-term goal of sustaining livelihoods. The results of this have included increased conflicts and unstable ecosystems. Hence the need for resilience: to endure the “development” brought on by the same governments and organizations.
Russell
Russell L. • Excellent comments Mark
ROBERTO
ROBERTO V. • Dear Russell, you pose a very good question. Below I share my views on resilience and sustainability.
Resilience and sustainability are not synonymous, but related concepts: resilience is one of several necessary conditions for sustainability and, thus, it is subsumed into it.
Resilience points to the capacity of a society to face risks (economic crises, social disruptions, natural disasters, climate change, etc.), resist and adapt, and recover (even perhaps better prepared for facing subsequent similar events).
Sustainability refers to built-in institutions and practices put in place by a society to secure that advancements on three fronts (economic, social and environmental) are lasting and reinforce one another (this second aspect, besides the long-term permanence of progress is increasinly underscored in the international policy dialogue).
Indeed, as sustainability implies that improvements in the economic, social and environmenttal aspects of development should be not ephymeral, but persistent into the long term, resilience is required. Hence, resilience is a necessary condition for sustainability, but does not encompass all that is needed: sustainability calls not only for preparedness, insurance and effective institutions (safety nets, social cohesion, transparency and equity in the application of relief and recovery funds, etc.) to react against the occurrance of negative risky events, but with the same or greater importance highlights the need to introduce dynamically and maintain over time processes (in production, in social interactions, in environmental management) that reduce or elliminate environmental degradation and imbalances, increase social inclussiveness and equity, apply green economics, and secure public governance.
Two 2012 documents of the United Nations clearly ellaborate on these concepts and are available online: 1) the UN Secretary General´s High Level Panel Report on Global Sustainablility; and 2) the outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.
In a very simple and imperfect analogy: if development were like advancing along a highway with mankind in a vehicle driven by its leaders, sustainability would be seen in the performance of the vehicle along the whole road, its comfort and amenities, its energy efficiency, and the aptitude of the driver including his/her ability to get information from all passenges and delliberate with them to get adequate and shared decisions, and follow these, on what they need to move ahead more rapidly, more safely, happier and with everyone trtaed respectufly and fairly; and resilience would be observed in how the vehicle and the group function upon eventual accidents, whether the vehicle has early alert instruments of approaching problems, whether there are air bags and emergency health kits, how the passengers help each other with priority to those most injured, and how the driver facilitates that everyone and the vehicle get well and ready to recover their journey. Advancing along the highway needs all this to happen.
William
William F. • I am in total agreement with Mark and Roberto's differentiation of the concepts of resilience and sustainability. I would add the following: I think the concept of sustainability partly came about as an objective of the donors, namely that recipient countries would ultimately become independent without the need of outside support. Hidden in that notional objective were many things: a country's economy would have to earn enough to provide ample welfare for all of the citizens, provide sufficient revenues through various means of taxation, fees and duties to cover all the costs of government overheads and programs, provide sufficient reserves in the form of emergency financial reserves and operational safety nets, organisational and institutional backup systems and plans that would insure a country had the self-sufficient means - i.e. the resilience to deal with internal and external shocks whether in the form of natural disasters, international financial shocks/disruptions including major spikes in inflation caused by such things as a dramatic rise in oil prices, food production crises; acts of war or internal conflict (here there is the notion that the international diplomatic skills and various international memberships in organisations like the UN and participation in treaty agreements would provide the country with the means to halt any threats to security or threats to the general welfare of the nation caused by such things as Climate Change); and to have the means to provide for its own security (police, military and non-corrupt judicial systems) as well as providing for joint security and systems of plurilateral or multilateral governance ..... and to do all of that with a economic drivers (small, medium and large-scale enterprises) that were not going to wreak havoc on the environment or fail to cover the real costs of environmental protection.
To the best of my knowledge this general notion of "sustainability" was never formally defined as described above although certain objectives (elements) of sustainability were defined.
Two decades ago when the sustainability became the watch-word of international development the concept of "resilience" was not part of the lexicon .... it was a duty of the international community to help nations suffering certain shocks to their welfare, usually from national disasters or to help them mop-up after civil war or an external conflict. The concept of national resilience was not yet part of the sustainability matrix. This has become a new objective, part of the self-sustainability package that every nation should have, the notional concept of self-insurance, that a country have emergency financial resources and sufficient means to handle most crises.
Examples of this kind of capability are best illustrated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the United States and the Emergency Preparedness Agency in Canada, which taps into a wealth of national, provincial and local resources to deal with emergencies such as massive spring floods, the Ice-Storm of 1998 which wiped out electrical power to major portions of Canada for up to 30 days during the coldest months of the year).
National resilience conveys the notion of self-reliance but up to a point. Beyond a certain point, the world community recognises that it has a responsibility to provide additional assistance as in the case of the Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, the tsunami/nuclear crisis in Japan and the earthquake in Haiti.
While the donor community has been pushing the concepts of "sustainability", and more recently "resilience", as ultimate objectives for all developing and middle-income nations, it has failed to look critically at its own foundations of sustainability and resilience. When one considers the level of indebtedness of most advanced nations, almost all of them are in serious trouble, if not immediately, sometime in the not-so-distant future. Another financial shock might do us all in.