Community resilience for a 1.5 °C world

Abstract

Ten essentials are presented for community resilience initiatives in the context of achieving a 1.5 o C world: Enhance adaptability; take account of shocks and stresses; work horizontally across issues; work vertically across social scales; aggressively reduce carbon emissions; build narratives about climate change; engage directly with futures; focus on climate disadvantage; focus on processes and pathways; and encourage transformations for resilience. Together the essentials highlight that resilience initiatives seeking to retain the status quo will be detrimental when they enable societies to cling to unsustainable activities. Instead, climate resilience initiatives need to be viewed more as a process of transformative social change, where learning, power, inequities and relationships matter. Finally, there is an urgent need for researchers to shift focus away from examining the nature of resilience to accelerating learning about fostering resilience in practice.

Creating the Conditions for Community Resilience: Aberdeen, Scotland—An Example of the Role of Community Planning Groups

“…The ''ten essentials of community resilience'' identified by Fazey et al (2018) are compared to the attributes and composition of the Aberdeen LRPG, and how the issues raised during the workshop relate to these ''ten essentials'' is shown in Table 3. The workshop discussions were summarized by the author.…”

“…In a review of recent literature drawing on community psychology, disaster management, and the authors' own experiences, Fazey et al (2018) outlined 10 essential criteria that are necessary in their view to enable a community to transform in the context of climate change. Transformation forms part of the definition of resilience (IPCC 2014) used here and is included in the principles outlined by the Scottish Guidance on Resilience (Scottish Government 2017a).…”

“…Using this concept should allow LRPGs to identify areas where their communities need additional support and to work with communities to develop multifaceted strategies. An assessment of an individual LRPG to determine to what extent they can meet the 10 essential criteria identified by Fazey et al (2018) will further highlight areas where a LRPG can potentially intervene to support a community's resilience and its limitations.…”

Learnings from Local Collaborative Transformations: Setting a Basis for a Sustainability Framework

“…Finally, the fourth proposition addresses the need for open innovation, making transparent and explicit what is to be transformed and for whom, and promoting the destabilization of existing regimes. The idea of 'deliberate disruption' is a reaction to the urgency of tackling sustainability issues and the need for radical and 'deep' change, e.g., [44][45][46]. Several theories have been proposed to frame the more intangible outcomes, ranging from transformative social innovation [47], social learning [48], practices theory [49], technological innovation systems [50], narratives of change [51,52], institutionalization [53], cultural change [54], networked governance [55], etc.…”

Climate change and disasters: The ethics of leadership

“…Growing attention to the role of power, power differentials, and politics in resilience debates (Cote & Nightingale, ; Eriksen et al, ) and scholarship on community resilience (e.g., Berkes & Ross, ; CARRI, 2013; Fazey et al, )—a term commonly used in disaster management—have provided vital openings for ethical leadership and for compassionate, responsible, and justice‐driven leaders to take decisive action and support constituencies before they are harmed. Collaborative governance and leadership are among the core features of community resilience (Berkes & Ross, ) while an explicit focus on climate disadvantage and (in)justice and processes of learning and empowerment feature among the 10 essentials of community resilience as described by Fazey et al ().…”