E. Lisa F. Schipper, Frank Thomalla, Gregor Vulturius, Marion Davis and Karlee Johnson
The purpose of this paper is to advance the dialogue between the disaster risk reduction (DRR) and adaptation community by investigating their differences, similarities and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance the dialogue between the disaster risk reduction (DRR) and adaptation community by investigating their differences, similarities and potential synergies. The paper examines how DRR and adaptation can inform development to tackle the underlying drivers of disaster risk.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a risk-based approach to the management of climate variability and change, the paper draws from a critical review of the literature on DRR and adaptation. The study finds that known and emerging risk from disasters continues to increase dramatically in many parts of the world, and that climate change is a key driver behind it. The authors also find that underlying causes of social vulnerability are still not adequately addressed in policy or practice. Linking DRR and adaptation is also complicated by different purposes and perspectives, fragmented knowledge, institutions and policy and poor stakeholder coordination.
Findings
The author’s analysis suggests that future work in DRR and adaptation should put a much greater emphasis on reducing vulnerability to environmental hazards, if there is truly a desire to tackle the underlying drivers of disaster and climate risks.
Originality/value
This will require coherent political action on DRR and adaptation aimed at addressing faulty development processes that are the main causes of growing vulnerability. The study concludes with a first look on the new Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and how it aims to connect with adaptation and development.
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Riyanti Djalante and Frank Thomalla
The purpose of this paper is to examine how past experiences in implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities can be harnessed to conceptualise effective and appropriate…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how past experiences in implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities can be harnessed to conceptualise effective and appropriate climate change adaptation (CCA) programs in Indonesia. The authors propose a conceptual framework for integrating DRR and CCA in managing climate‐related risks and explain the need for joint implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is conducted through review and analysis of academic, government and non‐government literature to determine the Indonesian experience in integrating DRR and CCA. Interviews were conducted with 26 DRR and CCA stakeholders in Indonesia.
Findings
The authors make three propositions in this paper. First, there needs to be a re‐orientation of the institutional arrangements for DRR and CCA, to increase the effectiveness of planning and implementation. Second, DRR and CCA activities needed to be stronger supported at the local level, with a specific aim to reduce the underlying causes of vulnerability of communities at risk. Third, non‐government organisations play a very important role in integrating DRR and CCA through community‐based initiatives.
Research limitations/implications
While this paper focuses specifically on Indonesia, the findings are relevant to other countries with similar geographical and socio‐economic conditions, as they are likely to face similar challenges.
Practical implications
The paper provides practical suggestions on what steps government actors, at all political levels, can do to support the integration of DRR and CCA planning and implementation activities in Indonesia.
Originality/value
The paper is one of the first to document progress in integrating DRR and CCA in Indonesia.
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Abstract
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Climate change adaptation (CCA) has emerged as a significant new theme in development and many large development agencies, including bilateral, multilateral or non‐government, are…
Abstract
Purpose
Climate change adaptation (CCA) has emerged as a significant new theme in development and many large development agencies, including bilateral, multilateral or non‐government, are embarking on new programs focusing on CCA. However, the development sector has witnessed the rise and fall of many new development themes over the past 60 years around which funding has coalesced, only to see them fade away. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the new concept of CCA is being conceptualised and utilised by aid workers in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for effective CCA and development practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has emerged from a broader study that involved 35 semi‐structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation with various stakeholders engaged in development and CCA. The research sought to understand how development actors defined CCA, what activities they associated with it, and how they were using the concept in their work.
Findings
This paper finds that there is a range of different, and at points contradictory, conceptualisations of CCA within the field of development. CCA discourses are being used in at least two different ways: to enable the re‐legitimisation and repetition of old development practices as well as to open a space for new practices and imagining of alternatives.
Originality/value
This paper offers a unique perspective of how a set of development actors are conceptualising and utilising the concept of climate change adaptation in their work. This timely contribution builds on a long history of critical development theory, which has interrogated development discourses, by investigating original data that explores this increasingly prominent theme in aid and development.
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Alessandra Ricciardelli, Francesco Manfredi and Margaret Antonicelli
The aim of this paper is to understand how resilience builds to achieve a management model for sustainable resilience, as advocated by sustainable development goals (SDGs), in…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to understand how resilience builds to achieve a management model for sustainable resilience, as advocated by sustainable development goals (SDGs), in distressed communities. The topic is addressed with the case of Macerata, an Italian city located at the epicentre of the devastating earthquake in 1997 and later, in a short time interval between August 2016 and January 2017. Necessary knowledge on modes and places of engagement and collaboration is delivered in the attempt to demonstrate that social and cultural factors have stronger impacts on devastated communities as they contribute to resilience for future incidents.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a quantitative econometric approach. It unfolds in two steps. The first uses the estimation method through factor analysis of an index of resilience, a latent variable, and reveals that it comes from social, cultural, political and economic latent factors. The second uses a reduced equation model that elaborates and integrates two models: the one estimating the relationship between the level of development and the impacts due to natural disasters and the other containing the index of resilience, but only its most relevant ones. A rotated component matrix, which is the elaboration of the model, will be created.
Findings
Although measuring resilience, in practice, is hampered by both conceptual and methodological challenges, including finding reliable and meaningful data, the attempt to measure resilience in this research has helped in testifying two important research hypotheses. According to H1, resilience is a fundamental variable to ensure faster economic recovery and has a negative impact on the dependent variable (deaths); hence, it is considered statistically significant. According to H2, social resilience develops and increases at the event’s recurrence and leverages on the adaptive, self-organising community capacities in recovering from traumatic circumstances and episodes of distress.
Research limitations/implications
The limitation of this paper is that the comparison between the two earthquakes is biased by the interviewees’ misleading responses on the provided questionnaires due to lack of memory about the 1997 shock and a more higher perception of the latest quakes that occurred recently in 2016 and 2017. There is a strong awareness of the fact that future research will improve the analysis suggested in this paper by attempting a quantification of the perception about the difference between the two occurred earthquakes by replacing the dummy variable (β6 improvement) with a cluster analysis.
Practical implications
The paper fills the gap in the empirical literature on risk management and organisational resilience. This research represents a guide to support and accelerate building resilience by people engagement and empowerment, enthusiasm and commitment in a way that conventional politics is failing to do. In particular, it aims to support public organisations and policymakers at the front by providing them with reliable information on the factors and concerns that need to be considered to increase community’s level of resilience, coherently with their endogenous characteristics, to ensure a steady, stable and sustainable recovery from the crisis.
Social implications
This research teaches that resilience depends on the existence of minimum preconditions for building resilience – political and economic opportunities, as well as cultural and social factors – as the measurement of tangible factors such as assets and financial capital may not capture everything that influences resilience. However, although it is common sense that disaster recovery processes are significantly hard to bear, it is important to acknowledge that they can offer a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities means to well-equip communities to advance long-term health, resilience and sustainability and prepare them for future challenges.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the discussion over the development of sustainable cities and communities by providing a resilience measurement framework in terms of indicators and dimensions of resilience. It emphasises on the endogenous adaptation capacity of territories partially analysed in the empirical literature with regard to resilience. The originality relates to the suggested model being a tool for social and territorial analysis, useful for ensuring a summary and comprehensive assessment of socioeconomic resilience; comparing different timelines (the first earthquake occurred in 1997 and the other two, occurring in a short time interval from one another, in August 2016 and January 2017).
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The present paper attempts to prove that social resilience to environmental risks should be considered as a potential mechanism of transfer of vulnerability from one social actor…
Abstract
Purpose
The present paper attempts to prove that social resilience to environmental risks should be considered as a potential mechanism of transfer of vulnerability from one social actor to another and/or transformation of vulnerability to one risk to vulnerability to another. This means that social resilience should not be treated always as a desirable attitude; it is desirable under certain conditions only.
Design/methodology/approach
Widespread views are challenged by alleging both theoretical knowledge and empirical outcomes. By carrying out insights to the epistemological roots of the concept resilience, its use in the domains of ecology, social and behavioural sciences, and actual experiences of resilience processes to risks in Greece, the author re‐integrates resilience analysis in the context of systemic understanding of society, the environment and interrelations between the two.
Findings
The paper introduces a clear dissociation of individualized from collective resilience and evidences that these two forms may come in conflict. Besides it indicates that assessment of resilience impacts on vulnerability is possible only by taking into account the systemic interconnections between community actors, on the one hand, and between environmental, natural and socio‐economic risks, on the other. The paper provides a methodological approach to the identity of a resilience process, an approach based on the determinant factors of resilience: the agency performing the process, the utilized resources, the stimulus and modus operandi, spatial and temporal range of the process and impacts on several aspects of vulnerability.
Practical implications
Acknowledgement of social resilience to risks as a mechanism of transfer and/or transformation of vulnerability entails radical changes in planning philosophy. Planning should focus more on keeping the effects of individualized resilience within the constraints of the wider community interest and environmental sustainability objectives, i.e. vulnerability reduction for all and vis‐à‐vis all risk aspects.
Originality/value
The paper reverses widespread optimism about social resilience to environmental risks as a universally positive process and a panacea for dealing with social vulnerability. It introduces a new methodology for evaluating virtual impacts on vulnerability and revises the guiding principles and given assumptions of risk mitigation planning.