The resilience concept requires greater attention to human livelihoods if it is to address the limits to adaptation strategies and the development needs of the planet's poorest and most vulnerable people. Although the concept of resilience is increasingly informing research and policy, its transfer from ecological theory to social systems leads to weak engagement with normative, social and political dimensions of climate change adaptation. A livelihood perspective helps strengthen resilience thinking by placing greater emphasis on human needs and their agency, empowerment and human rights, and considering adaptive livelihood systems in the context of wider transformational changes. Navigating the resilience renaissance Resilience has become a popular research and policy concept within climate change adaptation and development contexts 1. Emerging from a wide range of disciplines 2 , resilience in policy-making has often been based on the property of systems to bounce back to normality, drawing on engineering concepts 3. This implies the return of the functions of an individual, household, community or ecosystem to previous conditions, with as little damage and disruption as possible following shocks and stresses. This stable-equilibrium view has been challenged by research on linked social-ecological systems (SES), which emphasizes non-linear change, the inevitability of uncertainty and surprise (which may destabilize attempts to manage the capacity of systems to cope with change), and interrelationships and dynamism of multiple cross-scale systems 4. Crucially, resilience is increasingly providing an integrative 'boundary concept' that brings together those interested in tackling a range of shocks and stresses, including food security, social protection, conflict and disasters 5. This perspective article argues that three key areas linked to livelihood approaches can help to overcome the challenges of employing resilience thinking in order to inform improved
Large-scale data from digital infrastructure, like mobile phone networks, provides rich information on the behavior of millions of people in areas affected by climate stress. Using anonymized data on mobility and calling behavior from 5.1 million Grameenphone users in Barisal Division and Chittagong District, Bangladesh, we investigate the effect of Cyclone Mahasen, which struck Barisal and Chittagong in May 2013. We characterize spatiotemporal patterns and anomalies in calling frequency, mobile recharges, and population movements before, during and after the cyclone. While it was originally anticipated that the analysis might Climatic Change (2016) WorldPop, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK detect mass evacuations and displacement from coastal areas in the weeks following the storm, no evidence was found to suggest any permanent changes in population distributions. We detect anomalous patterns of mobility both around the time of early warning messages and the storm's landfall, showing where and when mobility occurred as well as its characteristics. We find that anomalous patterns of mobility and calling frequency correlate with rainfall intensity (r = .75, p < 0.05) and use calling frequency to construct a spatiotemporal distribution of cyclone impact as the storm moves across the affected region. Likewise, from mobile recharge purchases we show the spatiotemporal patterns in people's preparation for the storm in vulnerable areas. In addition to demonstrating how anomaly detection can be useful for modeling human adaptation to climate extremes, we also identify several promising avenues for future improvement of disaster planning and response activities.
Housing is not only a structure, but also a process tied up with social, cultural, psychological and economic attributes. Following Cyclone Sidr, the Government of Bangladesh has been using 'build back better' as a colloquial slogan to push forward the idea of resilience in post-disaster interventions, especially with regard to rebuilding houses. This paper examines how and whether the idea is reflected through the government's post-Sidr housing project at Gabtola. It problematizes the slogan from the accounts of community participation, local practicalities, culture, weather and potential future risks. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at Gabtola, this research found that the basic attributes of the 'build back better' slogan are absent with regard to the housing scheme's cost efficiency, management, livelihoods, public health aspects and tolerance against a super-cyclone. These findings will provide valuable insights into the problems associated with the implementation of post-cyclone public housing programmes in Bangladesh. Such insights can assist public authorities and other relevant organizations and donor agencies in revising and improving their post-disaster housing programmes in the wake of future disasters.
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