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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category Toward Resilience.
  • Is Resilience Too Accurate to Be Useful?

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 6, 2013  //  By Phil Vernon

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today. The original version of this article appeared on International Alert.

    Resilience is a wonderful metaphor. It somehow conveys in a single word the qualities of bending without breaking, of healing after an injury, of tensile rather than brittle strength. Oak and palm trees are resilient to the power of strong winds, before which they bend and then straighten again. Resilient people pick themselves up after being knocked down, draw on their reserves of ideas and strength to deal with difficult challenges, or hunker down until the gale has blown itself away. Resilient economies bounce back, and resilient ecosystems restore themselves after the fire or the flood has passed.

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  • Measuring Community Resilience: Implications for Development Aid

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    Guest Contributor  //  May 28, 2013  //  By Molly Jones

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    A staggering amount of development dollars – one in three, in fact – are lost due to natural disasters and crises. Certain communities are less affected than others by such disasters; they are more resilient. Knowing where vulnerability and strength exist and how to bolster them could help avoid these losses. Yet, today, very little data exists to help development practitioners understand which adaptive capacities are lagging in a given community.

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  • Surprises Ahead? Population-Environment Dynamics and Tipping Points

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    May 21, 2013  //  By Laurie Mazur

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    Today, the Sahara Desert is a vast, nearly lifeless expanse of sand and rock. But ancient cave paintings tell of a time when it was fertile grassland and bands of human hunters chased aurochs and antelope.

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  • Looking Back to Get Ahead: FEMA’s Strategic Foresight Initiative on Natural Disaster Preparedness

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    Guest Contributor  //  May 13, 2013  //  By Alan M. Wright

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    Natural disasters have dominated news coverage in the past several years, with many observers noting a distressing rise in the frequency and scale of disasters as well as rising costs. Despite these worrying trends, a critical mass of leadership and public support for doing something about it is emerging.

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  • Bouncing Back: How Do Population Dynamics and Social Cohesion Affect the Resilience of Societies?

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    From the Wilson Center  //  April 9, 2013  //  By Carolyn Lamere

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    “The scale and the impact of disasters today can be greater than anything we’ve previously experienced,” said Laurie Mazur at the Wilson Center on March 18. “The proliferation of disasters has gotten a lot of people talking about resilience, about how we can lessen our risk and how we can recover more quickly from disasters of all kinds.” [Video Below]

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  • Laurie Mazur: Build on Natural Tendencies to Strengthen Social Resilience

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    Friday Podcasts  //  April 5, 2013  //  By Carolyn Lamere

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    “The proliferation of disasters has gotten a lot of people talking about resilience, about how we can lessen our risk, and how we can recover more quickly from disasters of all kinds,” says Laurie Mazur in this week’s podcast.

    Mazur describes the qualities of communities that can weather adversity, including social cohesion and the ability to make decisions for themselves. Above all, she reiterates that “humans are nothing if not resilient,” and the governance structures and disaster mitigation schemes we employ should capitalize on that native resilience, rather than infringe upon it.

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  • On Building a Better (and More Resilient) World: Complexity, Community, and the Precautionary Principle

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    April 3, 2013  //  By Laurie Mazur

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    From the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to Superstorm Sandy, the last decade has seen an incredible array of natural disasters. Of course, disasters of all kinds are nothing new, but, thanks to the growing scale and interconnectedness of the human enterprise – and the damage we have done to the natural world – the frequency, scale, and consequences of today’s calamities are truly without precedent.

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  • After Cyclone Haruna, Blue Ventures Leverages Its PHE Program for Disaster Response in Madagascar

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    Beat on the Ground  //  Guest Contributor  //  March 28, 2013  //  By Laura Robson

    ‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today.

    Balbine is moving through her coastal village of Andavadoaka with a sense of urgency. Normally she works as a community-based distributor for Blue Ventures’ integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) program in southwest Madagascar, providing health information and products to her community. However, since Cyclone Haruna swept through the region several weeks ago, Balbine has been especially busy distributing diarrhea treatment kits to mothers caring for sick infants, providing families sleeping out in the open with mosquito nets to protect against malaria, setting up water filtering stations, and emphasizing the importance good hygiene practices.

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