Improving participatory resilience assessment by cross-fertilizing the Resilience Alliance and Transition Movement approaches

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The concept of resilience is currently being widely promoted and applied by environmental and development organizations. However, their application of resilience often lacks theoretical backing and evaluation. This paper presents a novel cross-fertilization of two commonly used approaches for applying resilience thinking: the grassroots movement of Transition Towns and the Resilience Alliance's Resilience Assessment. We compared these approaches through a text analysis of their key handbooks and combined them in a series of participatory workshops with a local partner active in the Transition Movement. Our results demonstrate that despite sharing a number of key features, these two approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Strengths of the Transition Movement include its motivating overarching narrative of the need to transform in response to global sustainability challenges, as well as practical tools promoting learning and participation. The Resilience Assessment's conceptual framework and structured process generated context-specific understanding of resilience, but provided little guidance on navigating transformation processes. Combining the Resilience Assessment's theory on complex systems with the Transition Movement's methods for learning also generated synergies in fostering complexity thinking. Based on these findings, we believe that integrating strengths from both approaches could be widely useful for practitioners seeking to apply resilience for sustainable development. Our study also highlights that methods for assessing resilience can be improved by combining insights from science and practice.

Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research

“…The other two studies [49,50] propose new conceptual frameworks with the aim of applying resilience for sustainable development. In particular, the study by Sellberg et al [50] compares and integrates two methods for assessing resilience of complex systems having complementary strengths: the transition movement and the resilience alliance's resilience assessment.…”

“…The other two studies [49,50] propose new conceptual frameworks with the aim of applying resilience for sustainable development. In particular, the study by Sellberg et al [50] compares and integrates two methods for assessing resilience of complex systems having complementary strengths: the transition movement and the resilience alliance's resilience assessment. Since the resilience assessment's conceptual framework generates context-specific understanding of resilience but provides little guidance on how to manage the transformation process, using it in combination with transition movement's methods is suggested, as the latter offer practical tools promoting learning and participation.…”

“…We also suggest that, given the considerable amount of conceptual research and the number of qualitative studies, more emphasis should be devoted to quantitative research approaches adopting, in particular, case studies and simulation. Both approaches would allow the attributes of resilience to be investigated in a greater depth and would contribute to the testing of the conceptual theories already developed [39,148] Engineering, psychology 3 [42,58,137] Environmental science and ecology, engineering, business and economics 4 [5,46,61,62,88] Engineering, operation research and management, computer science 5 [47,92] Environmental science and ecology 6 [50,99,136] Environmental science and ecology, computer science, business and economics 7 [53,117] Environmental science and ecology 8 [63,104] Environmental science and ecology, engineering, computer science 9 [35,59,66,79,113] Environmental science and ecology, engineering, operation research and management, computer science 10 [67,107] Engineering, operation research and management 11 [98,175] Environmental science and ecology, engineering 12 [38,52,121,152,157] Engineering, operation research and management, psychology 13…”

Major European Stressors and Potential of Available Tools for Assessment of Urban and Buildings Resilience

“…As a result of the increasing amount of shocks previously described, cities are responding in a wide variety of ways [57]. The importance of developing strategies for improving the resilience or minimizing negative impacts caused by unexpected disruptive events has been recognized and broadly accepted, and many tools have been developed worldwide [58]; the U.S. Green Building Council, administrating the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, made resilience a policy priority, writing RELi, a tool entirely focused on resilience.…”

Sustained sustainable development actions of China from 1986 to 2020

“…However, these methods have high data requirements, which are usually difficult to satisfy by existing statistical system of a nation or city. The text analysis (TA) is an alternative approach to extracting the insight of texts (i.e., policy documents, reports, and the literature in a particular filed) and their objectives 30 , and has been widely used in policy analyses: (1) TA is used to define a certain concept or clarify the concept’s origin, rationale, and development state 31 ; (2) the method is employed to identify specific actions in policy implementation, so as to find the critical factors or practices to policy success 32 – 36 ; and (3) TA is applicable to evaluating policy performance and status quo 37 , 38 . Compared with other quantitative methods, TA has the following advantages: first, the text materials related to policy formulation and implementation are easier to obtain; second, the analysis process is simple and reversible; third, the dynamic process and details of policy implementation can be reflected, enabling policy makers to summarize useful experience.…”