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Resilience has important economic and social implications.
Resilience has important economic and social implications.


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== Fragility ==
== Fragility ==
Without resilience, highly ordered social structures are reduced to chaos and crisis in the face of adversity. With resilience, we create abundance in good times and security in bad.  
Without resilience, highly ordered social structures are reduced to chaos and crisis in the face of adversity. With resilience, we create abundance in good times and security in bad.  


Optimization for efficiency in a routine context with little change leads to fragility in the face of the unexpected. There is usually a trade-off between efficiency and resilience.{{analyze}}
Optimization for efficiency in a routine context with little change leads to fragility in the face of the unexpected. There is usually a trade-off between efficiency and resilience.{{analyze}}


However it may be that too much emphasis on putting asid reserves, at the cost of efficiency, would not be ideal for resilience either. Less productivity compounded over a few years will lead to significantly less reserve, in terms of production capacity and reserve stocks (emergency supplies),{{analyze}}
However it may be that too much emphasis on putting aside reserves, at the cost of efficiency, would not be ideal for resilience either. Less productivity compounded over a few years will lead to significantly less reserve, in terms of production capacity and reserve stocks (emergency supplies),{{analyze}}


In contrast to efficiency, focusing on [[abundance]] enhances everyday life and effective productivity as well as creating resilience. An abundance focus - avoiding [[waste]],  
In contrast to efficiency, focusing on [[abundance]] enhances everyday life and effective productivity as well as creating resilience. An abundance focus - avoiding [[waste]],  
improving productivity through the nurturing of soils, reuse of resources -  
improving productivity through the nurturing of soils, reuse of resources -  
Even with [[technological advances]] and even if we choose [[simple living]] (which seems unlikely) however, the closer we approach the limits of the earth's carrying capacity, the less [[buffering capacity]] and the less resilience we have. Maintaining a spreaded (little-urbanized) and low population number is hence also part of creating resilience. (see [[Human population management]])


== Shocks ==
== Shocks ==
Shocks are by nature unexpected - in spite of the confidence of forecasts by government and other experts, we don't know what we face in future.
Shocks are by nature unexpected - in spite of the confidence of forecasts by government and other experts, we don't know what we face in future.


== Complexity ==
== Complexity ==


Humans and nature make up social-ecological systems - an ecosystem of interdependent elements. Our systems are complex, unpredictable, in constant flux. There is no blueprint for being resilient, but a toolkit of solutions and a sourcebook and laboratory of ideas.  
Humans and nature make up social-ecological systems - an ecosystem of [[Glossary_of_sustainability_terms#I|interdependent]] elements. Our systems are complex, unpredictable, in constant flux. There is no blueprint for being resilient, but a toolkit of solutions and a sourcebook and laboratory of ideas.


== What is resilience? ==
== What is resilience? ==


The benefits of resilience to a community include:
The benefits of resilience to a community include:
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* Meeting local needs even in the substantial absence of travel and transport
* Meeting local needs even in the substantial absence of travel and transport


Resilience is a serious topic with important economic and social implications - it is not a fringe environmentalist idea. For example, see the writings of [http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/about.html John Robb] and [http://jeffvail.net/ Jeff Vail], whose websites portray them as military intelligence and geopolitical experts, with specialties in counter-terrorism and the like, acting as consultants and lecturers to government alphabet agencies. Each talks at length about resilient communities. Vail also uses the phrase, which he may have coined, the [[hamlet economy]],<ref>[http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/07/re-post-hamlet-economy.html Re-Post: Hamlet Economy], Jeff Vail, July 28, 2008,</ref> and describes it as “as a non-hierarchal network of self-sufficient but interacting nodes.”
Resilience is a serious topic with important economic and social implications - it is not a fringe environmentalist idea. For example, see the writings of [http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/about.html John Robb] and [http://jeffvail.net/ Jeff Vail], whose websites portray them as military intelligence and geopolitical experts, with specialties in counter-terrorism and the like, acting as consultants and lecturers to government alphabet agencies. Each talks at length about resilient communities. Vail also uses the phrase, which he may have coined, the [[hamlet economy]],<ref>[http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/07/re-post-hamlet-economy.html Re-Post: Hamlet Economy], Jeff Vail, July 28, 2008,</ref> and describes it as “as a non-hierarchal network of [[self-sufficient]] but interacting nodes.”


== How is resilience created? ==
== How is resilience created? ==
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Resilience is created through diversity, preparedness, wisdom and abundance.
Resilience is created through diversity, preparedness, wisdom and abundance.


===Diversity===
=== Social cohesion ===


Each element in the system performs multiple functions, and each function is served by multiple elements. Diversity of action and design gives us choices and backups. In our gardens it gives us a variety of flavors, a longer harvest, and resistance to disease. In our living environment it gives us richness of experience.
Willingness to cooperate and share resources.
 
Solutions designed and implemented by members of the community, working together.
 
Local services and joint efforts focus on the ecosystem: [[community gardens]], [[urban gardens]], [[green roofs]], [[parks]] and [[forests]].
 
=== Diversity and redundancy ===
 
Each element in the system performs multiple functions, and each function is served by multiple elements. Diversity of action and design gives us choices and backups - multiple local sources for food, water and energy. In our gardens it gives us a variety of flavors, a longer harvest, and resistance to disease. In our living environment it gives us richness of experience.


This applies to skills also. For example medical specialists are very valuable having medical skills (first aid and more) throughout the community enables a better response than having ''only'' medical specialists. This is especially true in more isolated communities, or those with less availability of medical care; in all cases the need is greater in cases of disaster or shock that affect the availability of medical services. (See [[Where There Is No Doctor]]).
This applies to skills also. For example medical specialists are very valuable having medical skills (first aid and more) throughout the community enables a better response than having ''only'' medical specialists. This is especially true in more isolated communities, or those with less availability of medical care; in all cases the need is greater in cases of disaster or shock that affect the availability of medical services. (See [[Where There Is No Doctor]]).


===Preparedness===
=== Preparedness ===


Thinking ahead, conserving, studying and planning for our future. Preparing for hard times that may or may not come, in a form that we cannot predict.  
Thinking ahead, conserving, studying and planning for our future. Preparing for hard times that may or may not come, in a form that we cannot predict.  
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== Design and technology ==
== Design and technology ==


[[Earthquakes]] and other natural disasters occur around the world - however it is usually only in pooper countries that experience major disasters, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths, and larger numbers of people displaced.  
[[Earthquakes]] and other natural disasters occur around the world - however it is usually only in poorer countries that experience major disasters, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths, and larger numbers of people displaced.  


This is due to a lack of:
This is due to a lack of:
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== See also ==
== See also ==
* [[Resilient communities]]
* [[Resilient communities]]
* [[Glossary_of_sustainability_terms#I|Interdependence]]


== External links ==
== External links ==

Revision as of 20:10, 7 September 2015

Resilience is a way of living, preparing, and creating abundance.

Resilient communities are capable of bouncing back from hard times and shocks. They do this by influencing and preparing for economic, social and environmental change. They do this both actively and also passively through the inherent design of the system.

When times are bad they can call upon the many resouces that make them a healthy community. Their social capital means that they have good information and communication networks, and a community that shares and helps as needed.

Resilience uses ancient wisdom and modern science. It relies on design, technology, and action, that enables people and communities to absorb change and bounce back from shocks and hard times. Resilience means being able to call upon resources we prepared beforehand. Our social capital gives us good information and communication, and our community shares and helps. Our design and preparedness strengthen us, and the diversity and creativity of our solutions respond to local circumstances.

Resilience has important economic and social implications.

Fragility

Without resilience, highly ordered social structures are reduced to chaos and crisis in the face of adversity. With resilience, we create abundance in good times and security in bad.

Optimization for efficiency in a routine context with little change leads to fragility in the face of the unexpected. There is usually a trade-off between efficiency and resilience.Template:Analyze

However it may be that too much emphasis on putting aside reserves, at the cost of efficiency, would not be ideal for resilience either. Less productivity compounded over a few years will lead to significantly less reserve, in terms of production capacity and reserve stocks (emergency supplies),Template:Analyze

In contrast to efficiency, focusing on abundance enhances everyday life and effective productivity as well as creating resilience. An abundance focus - avoiding waste, improving productivity through the nurturing of soils, reuse of resources -

Even with technological advances and even if we choose simple living (which seems unlikely) however, the closer we approach the limits of the earth's carrying capacity, the less buffering capacity and the less resilience we have. Maintaining a spreaded (little-urbanized) and low population number is hence also part of creating resilience. (see Human population management)

Shocks

Shocks are by nature unexpected - in spite of the confidence of forecasts by government and other experts, we don't know what we face in future.

Complexity

Humans and nature make up social-ecological systems - an ecosystem of interdependent elements. Our systems are complex, unpredictable, in constant flux. There is no blueprint for being resilient, but a toolkit of solutions and a sourcebook and laboratory of ideas.

What is resilience?

The benefits of resilience to a community include:

  • Diversity of character and creative solutions responding to local circumstances
  • Meeting local needs even in the substantial absence of travel and transport

Resilience is a serious topic with important economic and social implications - it is not a fringe environmentalist idea. For example, see the writings of John Robb and Jeff Vail, whose websites portray them as military intelligence and geopolitical experts, with specialties in counter-terrorism and the like, acting as consultants and lecturers to government alphabet agencies. Each talks at length about resilient communities. Vail also uses the phrase, which he may have coined, the hamlet economy,[1] and describes it as “as a non-hierarchal network of self-sufficient but interacting nodes.”

How is resilience created?

Resilience is created through diversity, preparedness, wisdom and abundance.

Social cohesion

Willingness to cooperate and share resources.

Solutions designed and implemented by members of the community, working together.

Local services and joint efforts focus on the ecosystem: community gardens, urban gardens, green roofs, parks and forests.

Diversity and redundancy

Each element in the system performs multiple functions, and each function is served by multiple elements. Diversity of action and design gives us choices and backups - multiple local sources for food, water and energy. In our gardens it gives us a variety of flavors, a longer harvest, and resistance to disease. In our living environment it gives us richness of experience.

This applies to skills also. For example medical specialists are very valuable having medical skills (first aid and more) throughout the community enables a better response than having only medical specialists. This is especially true in more isolated communities, or those with less availability of medical care; in all cases the need is greater in cases of disaster or shock that affect the availability of medical services. (See Where There Is No Doctor).

Preparedness

Thinking ahead, conserving, studying and planning for our future. Preparing for hard times that may or may not come, in a form that we cannot predict.

Although it involves planning for the worst, resilience allows us to live with the best when things go well, by giving us abundance and security.

Wisdom

Globally shared solutions to local challenges, a commons of tools and ideas, an understanding of context.

Abundance

Creating more than we need, a buffer against harsh times. Resilience is joyful, abundant living, creating more than we need - preparing for hard times whenever they come, and creating a thrivable future whatever may come.

Resilience is distinct from sustainability

Resilience is distinct from sustainability, but with much overlap.

The concept of resilience is distinct from the more-often-mentioned concept of sustainability. For example, plastics recycling is almost certainly better for the environment as a whole, but adds nearly no resilience to the community. However, developing other uses for waste plastics requiring minimal processing, which can be processed and used locally, adds resilience - for example compressed building blocks or insulating products.

See Industrial ecology and No such thing as waste.

Looking back

There was much in the past that we would never wish to return to: life was often miserable, debilitating and short, and in many ways there was a terrible lack of freedom, that today we would find strange, if not intolerable. Lives were shorter, and less "soft" as George Monbiot writes. We would not want to return to this - and yet, there is much that we can learn in the inventive and careful ways that society responded to its challenges.

The Australian Aboriginal and Papua New Guinean idea of sacred sites provided a reservoir of protected animals that would always be able to breed, giving resilience to their population. No-fishing zones work on the same principles today.[verification needed]{{expand} (No-fishing zones work well when enforced on a local or national scale, but they are difficult to apply in international zones, leading to a "tragedy of the Commons" dilemma).

Why local is important

The set of solutions that will work in one place may not work in other places, because of unique demographics and physical attributes.

When travel and transport become difficult or expensive, the resilient community experiences less impact.

Why wider networks are important

A large interconnected system offers advantages in resilience also - the whole can absorb shocks in a part.

Amartya Sen research on famines found that they have never occured in a democracy with a free press. A government concerned about what voters think will always fix the problem. This shows that there is enough resilience and response within the national system to respond to a calamity affecting part of the country. They can do that by mobilizing resources from the larger system and economy.

It is unwise to rely entirely on this, however, as a calamity on an unprecedented scale (national or larger) will be much more difficult to solve. Also, it is clearly better to not have the calamity in the first place,

Design and technology

Earthquakes and other natural disasters occur around the world - however it is usually only in poorer countries that experience major disasters, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths, and larger numbers of people displaced.

This is due to a lack of:

  • Design - the awareness, financial resources and regulations to ensure that houses are safe and shelters are available.
  • Technology - advance warning systems and public alert systems are typically not prepared. Note that this is firstly a matter of prioritization and effective governance, as there are generally a range of possible solutions, including affordable systems using existing technologies and communication systems.

The resilient community within society

Resilient communities influence their environments and prepare for change, whether economic, social or environmental. They are active in influencing their environments and passively prepared through resilient design.

Notes

  1. Re-Post: Hamlet Economy, Jeff Vail, July 28, 2008,

See also

External links

This page contains public domain content from Of Resilient Communities & Ecovillages, timboucher.com, Sep 25, 2008.

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