How Social And Political Procedures Affects Resilience At Various Spatial Scales

Simply put, humans can adapt to environmental or planetary changes by either changing themselves, changing the way they interact with the environment, or change the environment itself. However, in order to efficiently respond to such events, the public must be alert to the issue, trust their information source, perceive the risk real, and garner consensus surrounding the problem and potential solutions. Responding and adapting to environment changes or disasters seems to most effectively start at the community level and expands outward to the town, county, state and national level.

This book is written by Peter Newman, while Timothy Beatley, and heather Boyer were the coauthors. Together they examined the idea of a resilient city in 2009. The book defined resilient as lasting, making it through a crisis, something that requires inner strength and resolve, and having strong physical infrastructure and built environment. The book later states that the main roadblock in the way of resilience is fear, and throughout the book they give many examples where fear lead to a cities downfall. They also suggest that because of our resources depleting rapidly we should really be acting now in order to make a change in order to save what is left of them.

In light of the current events in North Dakota dealing with the Bakken pipeline, the resulting possibility of manmade environmental disasters on Native American land, and Robert Verchick’s lecture regarding the Isle de Jean Charles, I was interested in performing a high-level analysis of the resilience of Native American tribes in the US. In this reaction paper, I would like to address one central question – are Native American tribes in the US adequately resilient to disaster risk? As we have discussed, in the disaster risk context, resilience can be broadly defined as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” However, according to Farber, the concepts of vulnerability and resilience are complexly intertwined, and one cannot be studied without the other. I would like to briefly examine both the special vulnerabilities of Native American tribes and the sufficiency of modern federal disaster legislation in advocating their resilience.

What does it really mean to be resilient? Resilience has been defined in many different contexts and has many different interpretations, but in this case, resilience is “ the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedbacks [identity]” (Walker and Salt, 2012). That being said, resilience theory focuses on the social-ecological interactions of a system, keeping in mind that systems are self-organizing and complex, and can either adapt or transform depending on the magnitude of perturbations. Having a system that is resilient does not necessarily mean that it is a good thing and unfavorable system states can be resilient (Walker and Salt, 2012). A distinction between sustainability and resilience should be made in order to understand the resilience approach. Sustainability refers to a system that is essentially in dynamic equilibrium where the system states can be maintained, and resilience recognizes that systems are changing nonlinearly and that shifts in system states may occur (Benson and Craig, 2014). In a world where humans are completely altering the environmental system, which ultimately affects every aspect of the social system, the resilience approach seems necessary.

There are numerous points of view on resiliency, as non‑governmental associations (NGOs) perceive that individuals ' capacity to better withstand and recuperate from calamities is basic to maintaining improvement. NGOs, contributors and worldwide reaction groups are attempting to characterize resiliency in their terms. CRS characterizes resiliency as "the capacity of people, communities and institutions to advance integral human development in the face of shocks, cycles and trends" (2014, p.2). The vulnerable individuals themselves best characterize strength and resiliency. What vulnerable individuals accept helps most to their versatility limit is discriminating to current dialogs on resiliency. Contributors and NGOs may have their own meaning of the term; however, an understanding of what it really means to individuals looking to make their community resilient is crucial to outlining successful Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and recovery activities in development, risk reaction and catastrophe recuperation programs (CRS, 2014). The danger of not utilizing the

As a result of such changes many of these developing countries are exposed to extreme and unpredictable natural disasters such as drought, floods and cyclones. Many of these developing countries are the poorest in the world and have had minor contributions to climate change, however these people are the most vulnerable to these effects and are not capable in making the required adaptations to the changing conditions. At a recent Caritas meeting in Fiji, Father Michael McKenzie said form Kiribati that “For us climate change is a life issue ¬¬¬¬– people are trying to cope with it day by day. For the rest of the world it is an economic

Resilience is a term that is often applied to those who have faced hardship and viewed the experience in a positive light as an opportunity to grow and change for the better (Wagnild & Collins, 2009). The definition however seems to vary from place to place. Ungar et al. (2008) stated “definitions of resilience are ambiguous when viewed across cultures" (p.174) which is why the understanding of resilience may be difficult to capture (as cited in Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). Although the literature agrees on several common themes about resilience there are many varying opinions on how to define the concept or the attributing factors. Earvolino-Ramirez (2007) and

Vulnerability of people in Hurricane Andrew and the Bangladesh Typhoon were different for these two social systems despite the similarities of the two disasters. Hurricane Andrew took place in 1992 and was a category five hurricane which killed 23 people and left $26.5 billion in damages. Bangladesh Typhoon took place in 1991 and was also the same storm intensity as Hurricane Andrew, however, it killed 100,000 people and left millions displaced. “Humans are great optimizers” (Walker & Salt, 2006, p. 28). Humans like stability and not variability, for it hooks into something psychological that we like consistency and we want growth in a linear way, however, that is not how it works.

A natural disaster has the capability to cause large scale damage and destruction to an area. Seismic events have been known to alter landscapes and affect the livelihoods, health and development of communities. No two earthquake events are the same and the level of threat posed by an earthquake can vary due to both the human and physical factors of an area. The 2010 magnitude - 7.0 earthquake that occurred in Haiti is an example of where a natural disaster caused a previously vulnerable area to suffer tremendous loss and debilitating socio-economic impacts, to an already poverty-stricken nation.

With the exposure to the global and local climate change issues, I have analyzed the challenges of climate change in different sectors and the importance of adaptation to develop a resilient community. The research study has been proposed by me based on experienced related to climate change and disaster management. For this I incorporated the knowledge and skills I have gained from various countries by being participated in academic and training programmes for last 14 years. This will help me to continue and gain a recognized research output in my proposed research

Resilience is the notation is withstanding the onset disaster prior and after it has happened. In regards to the long term data collected, there are projects and organizations set to help spread knowledge of weather events and to strengthen this population greatly. Afghanistan working extensively with the Strategic National Action Plan (SNAP) and HYOGO Frame Work for Action (HFA) has provided response, planning and mitigation for future extreme weather events. It was documented that policy planning and looking into vulnerable populations are one way to develop community responses. By understanding how the majority operates and what their needs are, then only can officials cater to them as well as if they are

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

Climate change is becoming a focal point for security and conflict research. Research suggests that violent conflict is affected by climate change and this could become increasingly worse in the future. Barnett, J., Adger, W. (2007) suggest that climate change undermines human security by reducing the access to natural resources that sustain people’s way of life. Climate change also has the capacity to undermine states as well by cutting off the states ability to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and which help to maintain and build peace in daily life. With access to natural resources diminishing and the state not being able to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and human security this

Investigating the Extent to Which States of Economic Development Influence the Way People Respond to Natural Hazards

13.1 Is not truly measurable since there are no concrete targets allowing us to measure resilience and adaptive capacity. How will we know if resilience and adaptive capacity was strengthened? How many countries have to count for success? If a developed nation has improved resilience but not a developing nation, have we reached our target?