Building Resilient Cities

 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUEi5K6r2xs

Fragile vs. Resilient Food Systems

Source: Films for Action

"Covid is shining the spotlight on the fragility of the linear systems that we have come to rely on.

In many countries, particularly in the US, the food system has been thrown into chaos. The industrial food system is inherently fragile. One missing link in the chain means the entire process grinds to a halt.

There are alternatives. 70% of the world's food is produced by smallholders (5 acres or less) and distributed to their local communities. Where I live in Central Victoria, we have created a thriving food network similar to the food systems that existed worldwide before industrialisation changed the way we eat. In our world, if one element of the network fails, there are many more to pick up the slack. A network like this can respond to change. It can adapt. It has humans at its source, so a bad year for one small farm provides an opportunity for the community to help out. In a system of people and not corporations you will never see millions of litres of milk thrown away or abattoir workers being forced to work when they're sick. You will not see the overt disregard for animal rights and the destruction of planet, climate and indigenous lands. You will never see millions on tonnes of food rotting in the fields while supermarket prices rise.

Creating resilient food networks is an exciting space, and many local councils, farmers and groups are bringing about positive and lasting change in this field. Check out what's going on in your area, find and meet your farmers, and plant food everywhere." - Brenna Quinlan

Urban resilience with gardening and sustainable employment hopes

by Stoney Chenal

Not until I moved to the South of Vietnam did I hold a strong idea of raising community gardens in cities. But this place is definitely different from Hanoi where I once spent 3 months to ride bicycles around Hanoi to find land for a community garden. One doesnt have to be very critical to realize that the chance for green jobs in Ho Chi Minh city is boundless.

Amazingly, all of reasons for the idea of urban gardening to be advocated and implemented are good. Starting a garden in the school, students can joyfully escape from existing boring environment and science lessons. Young learners even start growing curiosity and desire to explore the beauty of interconnectedness: every ecological element, such as soil, water, seed-plant-root, animals in the garden and so on, is a part of bigger systems and determine the way one another works. Children and youth grow physically and mentally from getting their hands dirty at the practical and interactive learning environment – that can alone solve many urban problems like internet addiction or street violence. At the household and community levels, the idea of growing your own food is far more than effective to protect human health, especially when food safety and chemical food poisons are no longer big concerns of housewives only. Imagine what can be better way to strengthen relationships between neighborhood members who share common spaces, planning, resources, labor works and benefits. Last but not least, there is no doubt that urban gardens are crucial parts in sustainable urban landscape design. 

Using different sustainable materials such as coconut and bamboo, architects find more fun and skillful in designing green spaces for the city.

In short, this is a win-win solution: for human and for nature. My question was that once it is this important, in what further term, urban gardening can figure out solutions for other ecological and environmental problems led by unsustainable practices, and at the same time, create new hopes? Systematic collapse such as man-made climate change threatens not only the natural ecosystem but also livelihood of thousands of people. That is the main motivation for me to start a vocational training programme on urban gardening in Ho Chi Minh City, together with Green Youth Collective – a local social enterprise. Through the process of feasibility study, nothing I could use to illustrate personal surprise to see how many local organizations, restaurants and cafeterias, schools had brought gardens into their spaces. (Im growing a journal saving all stories and people I have met working in the area!) That also means there are immense market demands for jobs available in urban gardening. The good news is this trend is nowhere going to stop.

Our plot for the training is located within a system of a big community garden, where youth easily interact with professional farmers and families with parents and kids spending free time to grow, to harvest and to cook right at the garden. The objective is simple: for them to know how to work with ecological elements, but not forget the idea of a system. This illustrates a picture of sustainability in which the output of a certain production process can be used as the input for one another.

Our working place! Such a beautiful harmonized space to think and to create. Dont you agree?

The programme offers many different faces of urban gardens: either its on a wall, or a rooftop, or a hydroponic garden like this with recycled plastic bottles. Half of bottles are white painted, in order to keep nutrient water from sunlight, and to change the way it should look. Sort of great idea, yeah? We have guest speakers who are gardeners and business owners of places like this to come and to conduct interactive sessions with youth. The design of vocational training programme also serves an objective of equipping youth essential skills, knowledge and attitudes to find their own jobs. There are many entrepreneurs who are our partners have already offered internships and jobs for youth!

Waste management, composting, plant container building..are also the things we are instructing to youth. From my perspective, this is a great way to learn how to live within the limits: when you can not exploit more, you learn how to use available resources in different purposes. Works can be creative and fun!

This start-up belongs to the range of what I belive and work for sustainability literacy. Urban gardening is a beautiful and powerful example of community empowerment, initiating sustainable practices towards resilience to change.

For all information, please contact My Hanh, Project Manager at hanh@greenyouthcollective.org.

Source: http://urbanclimatevn.com/2014/11/14/urban-resilience-with-gardening-and-sustainable-employment-hopes/

 

 

Internal Compass

Children and teens find meaning and purpose in life when they develop and listen to their own internal compasses. How does this guidance system emerge? Through adult support and relevant learning experiences! Hover over the compass points to see the eight internal strengths and their related skills. Explore articles by clicking on a compass point. Download an expanded, free Internal Compass Handout for use in discussions with parents, educators, and community leaders. 

Free Internal Compass Handout 

Free e-Book

If you question today’s notions of success and wonder how adults really affect the growth and well-being of today’s digital generation, download this free eBook by developmental psychologist, Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD.

Price-Mitchell makes an argument that measuring success by grades and test scores alone is not enough. In fact, it is a practice that is hurting our children.  How do we instill the types of skills and abilities that cannot be measured by numbers, including effort, critical thinking, collaboration, respect, caring, honesty, open-mindedness, initiative, and imagination?

Discover how children learn to be successful by developing an internal compass that guides them through life. Then ask yourself what lessons you learned from the adults who parented, taught, and mentored you. How will you share your story with the children you parent, teach, or mentor?

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD E-BOOK (PDF)

Source: http://www.rootsofaction.com

New booklet on building resilience in Social Ecological Systems

Applying resilience thinking - Seven principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems (SES) is a new booklet from the Stockholm Resilience Centre that describes how resilience can be practically applied. The booklet presents examples and case studies that illustrate seven principles for building resilience. Expanding on a previous review paper that emerged from a collaboration among Resilience Alliance Young Scholars (RAYS), this new publications is a summary of the upcoming book "Principles for Building Resilience: Sustaining Ecosystem Services in Social-Ecological Systems" soon to be published by Cambridge University Press. Editors: Oonsie Biggs, Maja Schlüter and Michael Schoon, will lead a panel discussion with some of the contributing authors at Resilience 2014, on Tuesday 6 May, 11:30-12:30.

New working group on collaborative governance and management 

RAYS members, Georgina Cundill and Michael Schoon, are leading a new working group on collaborative governance and management in support of resilience-based ecosystem stewardship. This working group (Christo Fabricius, Lisen Schultz, Chanda Meek and others) is part of a larger research initiative: the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) sponsored by ICSU and UNESCO. The project will carry out a multi-scale assessment of collaborative governance and management. Cundill and Schoon are optimistic that the international-level effort, under the PECS umbrella, will in turn support local efforts at understanding collaboration in environmental management.

Science and Practice of Ecology & Society Award

July 1, 2014 is the deadline for nominations for this year's Science and Practice of Ecology & Society Award. The award is given to the individual or organization that is the most effective in bringing transdisciplinary science of the interactions of ecology and society into practice. More information here.

 

Artic Resilience Report workshop

In preparation for the final Arctic Resilience Report a workshop and Project Steering Committee meeting were held in Helsinki, on April 8-9. The final report will be published next year May 2015. A session on The Arctic Resilience Report: Progress and Prospects will be held at Resilience 2014 on Tuesday 6 May, 15:40-16:40.

Assessing General Resilience

Brian Walker and colleagues have written a new discussion paper on General Resilience that was informed by a recent workshop in south-eastern Australia. In it they identify twelve components of general resilience and provide "a useful starting point for those considering undertaking this kind of assessment".  Read more here.

Publications
Select recent publications & writing  

Water resilience for human prosperity. 2014. Rockström, J., M. Falkenmark, C. Folke, M. Lannerstad, J. Barron, E. Enfors, L. Gordon, J. Heinke, H. Hoff and C. Pahl-Wostl. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Early warning signals of ecological transitions: methods for spatial patterns. 2014. Kéfi, S., V. Guttal, W.A. Brock, S.R. Carpenter, A.M. Ellison, V. N. Livina, D. A. Seekell, M. Scheffer, E.H. van Nes, and V. Dakos. PLoS ONE 9(3):e92097.

Water policy reform and innovation: A systematic review. 2014. Moore, M.L., S. von der Porten, R. Plummer, O. Brandes and J. Baird. Environmental Science & Policy 38:263-271.

Invasive plants as drivers of regime shifts: identifying high-priority invaders that alter feedback relationships. 2014. Gaertner, M., R. Biggs, M. Te Beest, C. Hui, J. Molofsky, and D. M. Richardson. Diversity and Distributions: in press.

Forest fragments modulate the provision of multiple ecosystem services. 2014. Mitchell, M.G.E., E.M. Bennett, and A. Gonzalez. Journal of Applied Ecology: in press.

Building Thriving, Resilient Communities

A Collection of Resources for You & Your Neighbors
to Create a Saner, Healthier Future Together

Compiled by Marissa Mommaerts; edited by Leslie Meehan & Ken White.
Sponsored by Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory.

This collection of books, online resources, trainings and courses was assembled by members and allies of the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory (TRCC), who share a vision of a world that is sustainable, just, compassionate, and healthy.
Building Thriving, Resilient Communities explores many exciting resilient systems being created in communities across the nation (and planet) that demonstrate how we can live more sustainably, and in community, while respecting Nature’s limits. More than just inspiring stories, this collection contains tools—practical, tested, hands-on ways you can begin making your community more resilient. And best of all, most of these steps—collaborating with neighbors, supporting local farmers and tradespeople, reducing dependence on globalized trade—are the right thing to do… even if we weren’t facing unprecedented challenges!

Building Thriving, Resilient Communities consists of five guides:

• Guide #1: Getting Started
  An introduction to the converging economic and ecological challenges we face as responsible people sharing this planet, along with exciting stories and useful tools to help us find our way
• Guide #2: Taking Steps Toward Resilience: Lifestyle Changes
  A brief list of simple steps individuals and households can make to use less energy, become more mindful and resilient, with links to additional information and resources for DIY projects
• Guide #3: Taking Steps Toward Resilience: Practical Projects
  Ideas, guides, and best practices for projects to mobilize your community - from relocalizing your food, energy, and economic systems to creating a culture of compassion and service
• Guide #4: Building a Movement: Tools for Effective Collaboration
  Tools to help you learn how to work effectively as a team, identify community resources and needs, and design an environment from which creativity and collective genius can emerge
• Guide #5: Shifting the System
  Legal information, organizing strategies, and models to shift current policies, systems, and infrastructure to support and foster community resilience

Enjoy the journey, and let us know what tools you discover or invent that might help others by emailing info@resilience.org.

Source: http://www.resilience.org/communities-guide

Developing Collective Wisdom in Communities, Cities, & Regions

We serve the vision of a world in which place-based communities become increasingly thriving and resilient. Rather than relying on the government to authorize and drive change from the top down, we believe that the shift to a global wisdom culture must also be initiated on the ground through the efforts of ordinary citizens within their home communities and cities.

Thousands of innovative approaches to community growth have been developed and successfully applied in real communities to bring the diverse voices of the community together to produce wise, collective visions and actions. The fundamental goal of these approaches is not to achieve an ideal state for a community but to develop an ongoing process through which a community can constantly recreate itself by mobilizing its own resources and collective wisdom in response to the challenges and opportunities it faces.

Leading community thinkers across civic, corporate, and social organizations consistently say that an integral, whole-systems approach is an essential factor in developing long-lasting community wellbeing. They consistently point to the interior dimension of relationship and culture as the primary social development need. Many outer tangible solutions to our ecosocial issues already exist. The inner cultural will and commitment to use them does not.

What community wisdom systems are strengthening the people and places where we live today? The regional and national organization and network hubs listed in the Movements section are a treasure-trove of useful information. We offer summaries of local ecosocial approaches here.

Transformative Co-leadership: Stewardship for Today and Tomorrow

In our interdependent society, co-creating a healthy community requires committed participation from across the “megacommunity” of the major organizational sectors: civic, social, and corporate. Multi-stakeholder community councils, whole-systems planning and analysis, and collaborative organization and funding structures are examples of geographic community leadership tools for both today and tomorrow.

Community stewardship today tends to be concentrated in specific sectors or domains in a community, often operating rather independently. More integral community stewardship systems are emerging, with new forms of partnerships, networks, coalitions, and alliances working across traditional grassroots and organization boundaries to address complex eco-social issues.  Key elements are common spaces for community dialogue and action and an open inclusive attitude. Leading resources include the books Megacommunities, Abundant Community, the reports in EcoSocial Design Strategies, and the following approaches below.

Art and Soul: Celebrating Beauty, Peace, and Circle of Life

Artists, healers, and faith and spiritual leaders tend the inner heart of the community. They provide spaces and places for people to simply be together in a meaningful way, to focus on the values and beliefs that are important to them and to develop and heal their relationships. Community groups embrace beauty, peace, and diversity through a broad range of creative expression in music, art, and theatre. Artistic expressions such as community theater productions or local talent shows, can also be memorable ways to knit the fabric of community. and through a wide variety of gathering centers honoring many faiths and beliefs. They maintain the rhythmic heartbeat of the community through honoring life and community passages with ceremonies and rituals such as weddings, funerals, and group prayer and meditation. Leading resources include interfaith organizations such as the United Religions Initiative (www.uri.org), community art projects such as quilting bees, and local/global peace campaigns such as the UN International Day of Peace (internationaldayofpeace.org). Community healing circles are a local approach.

Community Healing Circles

In indigenous cultures, the primary role of the shaman was to maintain the delicate balance between the human and nonhuman worlds through rituals and trance journey work, for the health and harmony of the community. Through their rituals the shamans would remind the human community to honor the sacred dimension of the greater Earth Community of which the humans were just one part. In the modern secular West, we have largely forgotten this perspective or often reject it as primitive superstition. Yet the consequences of our failure to respect the intrinsic worth and sacredness of the nonhuman worlds have, of course, become alarmingly clear in the reports of the mass extinction of species, vast deforestation, climate change, and other deeply troubling dimensions of the global ecological crisis. Furthermore, there is now considerable research from the field of consciousness studies that strongly suggests that our prayers, meditations, and intentions do have nonlocal healing effects (Nicol, 2010).

Accordingly, we believe that convening community-healing circles that explicitly honor the sacred dimension of ourselves, our communities, and our natural environment is a vital element of a truly integral approach to community development. These circles could involve shamanistic healing ceremonies, collective prayer and/or meditation, or any other form of spiritual practice that resonates with the group and is directed toward healing and blessing the community at large. Like many things in life, the most important elements are the intention you bring to the work and the consistency of your practice.

Leading resources include the book Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown (1998) as well as organizations Deep Ecology.org (www.deep-ecology.org) and Permanent Peace (www.permanentpeace.org).

Education and Communication: Learning and Getting Along

The more we listen and learn from each other about our communities and the broader world we live in, the better we understand and appreciate our own place within the community.  This awareness can bring comfort and satisfaction from a greater sense of belonging  and more capacity to make effective change where we live. Educating ourselves about our local communities at history and cultural centers, the local Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org) or land trust, and other uniquely local learning opportunities is a fabulous way to have fun, meet our neighbors, and learn useful skills. Learning about the local/regional/global connection through the media (such as YES! And National Geographic magazines, public television and radio) and seminars (ShiftNetwork.org, dialogue)

The opportunity and challenge of today is learning together in community so that we can think together in community. Participating in classes and gatherings together as community members and leaders to explore and discuss local ecosocial systems is a necessary ingredient in developing the trust and the expertise for wise local stewardship. Meeting in smaller circles about resilience/security (www.localcircles.org), sustainability (greendrinks.org) or any issue is equally important in building neighborhood trust and expertise.

Bringing people closer together in community also inevitably involves encountering our differences—different political views, educational backgrounds, communication styles, cultural assumptions, and so on. Our communities are healthy to the extent that they can allow these differences and integrate them in a higher creative synthesis. Easier said than done! Many of us have painful associations with conflict and tend to avoid it where possible. Others of us may tend to jump right in but later wish we didn’t. Furthermore, many of us have had disheartening experiences of our current legal and political approaches to resolving conflict, which, because of their adversarial frameworks, often exacerbate the tensions between the people involved, involve a huge amount of time and money, and leave lasting rips in the fabric of community. Yet with the right kind of “container” (and plenty of courage and commitment), sitting in the fire of conflict can bring communities closer together and unleash tremendous creative energy. The following innovative approaches are examples of intelligent frameworks for dealing with conflict and differences within communities.

Convening: Hosting Community Conversations

Bringing community members together for respectful, inclusive conversations is fundamental to building healthy communities. Effective conversations can take the more free-wheeling form of a community salon or the more deliberate and meditative form of a talking council or circle in the spirit of indigenous wisdom traditions. Leading resources include the book Change Handbook and Open Collaboration and the websites for the World Café (www.theworldcafe.com), Commonway (www.commonway.org), Open Space (www.openspaceworld.org), Conversation Café (www.conversationcafe.org), Future Search (www.futuresearch.net),  Change Handbook

Community mediation

Community mediation involves the use of trained community volunteers to provide mediation services as an alternative to the judicial system. Community mediation offers many advantages over traditional legal approaches to conflict resolution, such as:

• It provides a forum for dispute resolution at the earliest stage of the conflict;
• It uses mediators who reflect the diversity of the communities served; and
• It is committed to providing services to clients regardless of their ability to pay.

According to the National Association for Community Mediation (n.d.), a typical community mediation program has 1.5 equivalent full-time staff, 30 active mediators, and a $40,000/annum budget. Many community mediation centers have well established programs for schools that help to create a culture of nonviolent conflict resolution among the children and teachers.

Leading resources include the book Peace Skills: Manual for Community Mediators by Kraybill (2001) as well as the National Association for Community Mediation (www.nafcm.org).

Health and Recreation:  Wellness, Play, and Celebration

Public health and wellness is a vital component of a thriving community. Local governments and schools play an important role in community health, with faith and other organizations helping to create a safety net for people in need. Many familiar nonprofit institutions such as the YMCA.org, UnitedWay.org, and the Lions Club and newer emerging networks such as care2.org and communitycommonrs.org include health as a core part of their mission. Individual health providers and support groups such as twelve-step fellowships for addiction recovery provide

Social groups, sports leagues, parks and recreation programs provide group settings for fun and play, a necessary spice of life. Community fairs, festivals, and parties like Green Festivals (www.greenfestivals.org), EarthDance (www.earthdancenetwork.com), and Burning Man (www.burningman.com) are enjoyable celebrations which build connections between community members in relaxed, informal settings. Creative approaches such as InterPlay (www.interplay.org) have been developed that work with art and/or play to intentionally foster community transformation at a deep level.

Giving and Rights: Caring and Sharing Services

Volunteers, donors, and community service civic and social organizations tend the outer heart of community. They operate from a sense of community caring, ethics or values and dedicate their time and money to community welfare. The poverty-fighting network Community Action Partnership (www.communityactionpartnership.com), community foundation network Council on Foundations (www.cof.com), Rotary Clubs (rotary.org), are examples of large local/national network serving community needs. Service efforts usually focus on a particular aspect of community support, but by helping one part of a community, they contribute to the whole. The opportunity and challenge today is to develop megacommunity (corporate/social/civic) awareness and collaboration to leverage the talents and capacity of all our community resources. Social wellbeing can no longer be sufficiently funded by nonprofit donations or taxes alone. Crowdfunding (eg. www.indiegogo.org) is one example of a new collective funding mechanism.

Equitable human rights of North Americans across race, religion, gender, and economics, is a social justice imperative championed by thrivingresilience movements across the spectrum, from established institutional networks like the United Way to more recent phenomenons like the Occupy movement. The concept of intrinsic rights for local communities is also emerging in America. Communities and cities are adopting charters of community ethics including the Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org) and the Charter for Compassion (charterforcompassion.org). Some communities are creating codes of ethics and legal sovereignty to steward their local commons resources such as water rights.

Governance and Design: Social Contracts & Ecosocial Technologies

Governance and design systems involve the agreements we make to live together in a specific place and the information and technologies we use to design those agreements. Governance includes the legislative, executive, and judicial aspects of government: public policy advocacy, creation, engagement, and enforcement. The civic renewal movement works to establish neutral forums for public deliberation on critical community issues, increased public involvement in the development of regional community indicators, and more collaborative approaches to local and regional planning processes.

Ecosocial design systems include information systems, research and development, and analysis tools and indicators required to understand local community ecosocial systems. Design systems originate from action research institutes like the PostCarbon Institute (www.postcarbon.org) or Sustainability Institute (www.sustainabilityinstitute.org) and literally thousands of universities across the country, corporate products like GoogleEarth (www.googleearth.com), and nonprofit efforts like regional analysis tools from BALLE (www.livingeconomies.org) and Ecotrust (www.ecotrust.org).

Here is a sampling of the latest interesting approaches to systemic governance and design.

Community Democracy

Tom Atlee (n.d.) and others have argued persuasively that our current democratic processes need to evolve to reflect the whole systems worldview emerging from advances in both the natural and social sciences over the past century and to make our democracies more truly representative of the voice of the people. As Atlee says, truly participatory democracies that tap into the collective intelligence of the people would do more than measure opinion polls or simple majority votes. They would devise processes that, firstly, built the capacity of the whole community or society to reflect on itself and, secondly, elicited the collective wisdom of the whole for the benefit the whole. Innovative democratic approaches that invite a deeper level of participation from ordinary citizens in the governance of their communities include citizen deliberative councils, wisdom councils, and stewardship councils.

Leading resources include the books Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All by Tom Atlee (2002) Civic Revolutionaries: Igniting the Passion for Change in America’s Communities by Henton, Melville, and Walesh (2004), and the websites for citizen deliberative councils (http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-CDCs.html), the Center for Wise Democracy (www.wisedemocracy.org), America Speaks (www.americaspeaks.org), and the Democracy Collaborative (www.democracycollaborative.org), and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (www.deliberative-democracy.net).

Restorative justice

Restorative justice is an umbrella term for community-based approaches to criminal matters that emphasize repairing the harm caused by the crime. In a restorative justice circle, victims and offenders meet face to face, along with key members of their communities and a skilled facilitator, to address what happened in the crime. Victims are thus given an opportunity to express their pain, and to feel heard and understood. Offenders are given the chance to realize the full impact of their crime and to make amends. Both victims and offenders tend to rate this process a “highly satisfactory” way to deal with crime. Since 1989, New Zealand has made restorative justice processes the hub of its juvenile justice system (Restorative Justice Online, n.d.).

Leading resources include The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr (2002) as well as organizations Restorative Justice Online (www.restorativejustice.org) and Centre for Restorative Justice (www.sfu.ca/crj).

Asset Mapping

Many recent approaches to community development challenge the traditional focus on identifying a community’s needs and argue instead for the benefits of mapping a community’s assets. Mapping assets helps to connect people and resources within a community, stimulates the local economy, and provides a great foundation for community visioning or strategic planning processes. Furthermore, many communities have used an asset-mapping process as a springboard to develop their own Quality of Life indicators, another innovative way for a community to know itself better and to track its progress by its own standards.

Leading resources include the book Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets by Kretzmann and McKnight (1997) and the organizations Integral City (www.integralcity.com), Sustainable Seattle (www.sustainableseattle.org), and Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (www.livingeconomies.org).

Necessities and Exchange: Secure, Sustainable Stuff

Necessities and exchange systems concern the tangible practical stuff we people in communities need to live our daily lives. Necessities refers to the food and water supplies, air, land, shelter, clothing, energy, emergency medicine and services, and biodiversity we need to survive and thrive: the must-have abundant resources in a thriving, resilient society. Exchange involves the things we trade to fulfill our fundamental needs and the infrastructure systems we use to exchange them: transportation, business, finance, etc.

Leading resources include books Go Local by Michael Shuman and Sustainable World Sourcebook by Sustainable World Coalition and websites onthecommons.org, resilience.org, shareable.org, and greenamerica.or

Source: http://thrivingresilience.org/tools-and-approaches-overview/community-tools/

What resilience is really about

The brochure What is resilience? (pdf, 13.7 MB) is based on research conducted at Stockholm Resilience Centre and summarizes the three major strands in resilience thinking and social-ecological research. In three short chapters it describes humanity’s impact on the Earth system, and ideas on how to handle the resulting challenges.

Chapter one describes the complex interdependencies between humans and nature. There are today no ecosystems that are not in some way shaped or affected by human activity, and no people living independently of ecosystems and the services they provide.

Chapter two describes the astounding human development and how leaves its marks on the planet. The chapter introduces the challenges and opportunities connected to the Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene.

Finally, chapter three outlines ideas on how to move forward, including an introduction to the concept of social-ecological innovation.

Download English version here (pdf, 13.7 MB)

Download Swedish version here (pdf, 13.7 MB)

Want a printed version or use the brochure as part of teaching or training?

Contact us for more details: info@stockholmresilience.su.se

Source: http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-news/1-17-2014-what-resilience-is-really-about.html

Turn down the heat : climate extremes, regional impacts, and the case for resilience

Abstract

This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day, 2°C and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. It finds many significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and in some cases multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea level rise, more severe storms, droughts and floods are expected to have further severe negative implications for the poorest. Climate related extreme events could push households below the poverty trap threshold. High temperature extremes appear likely to affect yields of rice, wheat, maize and other important crops, adversely affecting food security. Promoting economic growth and the eradication of poverty and inequality will thus be an increasingly challenging task under future climate change. Immediate steps are needed to help countries adapt to the risks already locked in at current levels of 0.8°C warming, but with ambitious global action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming below 2°C. 

Complete Report in English

Official version of document

• Official PDF, 254 pages 17.78 mb
• http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/turn-down-heat-climate-extremes-regional-impacts-case-resilience-full-report

Designing a Resilient Community

Students participate in project-based learning over several days as they assess their community's ability to respond to crises that threaten both natural and human systems. Then they develop ideas for redesigning their community to be more resilient.
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/downloads/designing-resilient-community

Downloadable materials for these lessons include instructions and discussion questions, a set of "Redesigning Our Community" cards for students, professional development suggestions for instructors, and links to resources about resilient communities.

Grade Levels: 9–12

Estimated Time:
Lesson One: 50 minutes
Lesson Two: five to six hours, spread over several days
Lesson Three: seven to eight hours, spread over several days

Key Concepts:

• As we face complex and interconnected environmental and social challenges, some communities are transforming their structures, functions, and relationships to anticipate those challenges.
• By considering key local indicators, we can estimate our community's ability to endure and recover from crises that threaten the quality of life of humans and other living beings.
• Transforming a community often leads to personal and social transformations for community members.

Download Designing a Resilient Community Activity (1.3 mb pdf)

What does "resilience" mean at the personal, social, and ecological levels?
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/downloads/building-resilience-home
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/security-resilience-and-community

Lesson Plan: Summary of Activity

After reading "Security, Resilience, and Community" (an excerpt on the Center's website from the preface to David W. Orr's book, Down to the Wire), lead a class discussion about the meaning of "resilience" at the personal, social, and ecological levels. Brainstorm ways to increase the resilience of local communities. You may want just to read the essay yourself for background or ask your students to read it, depending on their cognitive and reading levels. You can find the essay at www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/security-resilience-and-community.

Grade Levels: 9-12

Estimated Time: 1-2 class periods (50-100 minutes)

Lesson Steps

1. Introduce the concept of resilience by asking students what we mean when we remark that someone "really bounced back" after a difficult time. Record their responses.
2. Write the word "RESILIENCE" on the board. Share with the class that "resilience" on the personal level is the capacity for a person to rebound from tough times and come through without psychological damage. Rather than giving up when faced with a difficult situation, resilient people face adversity with courage and determination. Sometimes they are even emotionally stronger than they were before. Ask if they can describe a time when they or someone they know demonstrated resilience.
3. You can expand the discussion by reading an Aesop's fable, "The Oak Tree and the Reeds," as an illustration of resilience:
   An Oak that grew on the bank of a river was uprooted by a severe gale of wind, and thrown across the stream. It fell among some Reeds growing by the water, and said to them, "How is it that you, who are so frail and slender, have managed to weather the storm, whereas I, with all my strength, have been torn up by the roots and hurled into the river?" "You were stubborn," came the reply, "and fought against the storm, which proved stronger than you: but we bow and yield to every breeze, and thus the gale passed harmlessly over our heads."
   See Aesop's Fables >
4. Ask students to identify the conditions which help build resilience for youth their age. Record their answers on the board. Ask the class, working together, to cluster responses that are similar and give each cluster a heading. (For example, Resiliency In Action identifies broad categories of conditions for nurturing resilience: caring and support; high expectations for success; opportunities for meaningful participation; positive bonds; clear and consistent boundaries; and life skills. Visit Resiliency in Action >)
5. Tell students that the idea of "resilience" can also apply to large-scale systems, like ecosystems, as well as to individual people. Ecosystems that are "resilient" are able to bounce back from a disturbance, like a fire or an oil spill, although it may take a long time. A resilient ecosystem can tolerate a disruption and eventually return to a healthy state. David Orr defines large-scale resilience as "the capacity of the system to 'absorb a disturbance; to undergo change and still retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedbacks.'"
6. Ask students to identify the conditions that affect an ecosystem's resilient (e.g., the severity of the disturbance, the ecosystem's biological diversity, its state of health prior to the disturbance, and palliative measures that are taken after the disturbance). Record their responses on the board, and cluster them if there are many responses. (See step 4 above.)
7. Share with students that scientists are concerned that widespread changes in climate threaten the resilience of many ecosystems, which in turn threatens the well-being of humans. Ask them to think about fertile land areas where we grow food, island and coastal communities that are vulnerable to rising ocean levels, and the global increase in extreme weather, and challenge them to make connections between the loss of resilience at the ecosystem level and the human-community level.
8. Some experts, like David Orr, are concluding that we can no longer count on large-scale government to protect us from these threats and that much of the work must be carried out at local and regional levels. Furthermore, he argues that society as a whole will be more resilient if we establish decentralized systems for provisioning ourselves (e.g., local food systems, energy systems, communication system, etc.). A regionalized system would be better able to bounce back from a severe disturbance in one place, such as a drought or an oil shortage. It would also be easier to repair, support the local economy, and reduce carbon emissions. Working in pairs, have students generate a chart that identifies potential positive and negative consequences of building decentralized systems.[i]
9. Ask students to brainstorm a list of ways they could collectively take action to secure local access to things that we in the U.S. consider to be our basic human rights: food, clean water, health, energy, shelter, and productive work. Use the list to formulate an action plan with students, with them taking the lead to make their community more secure.

---

[i] Orr describes what his community is doing to build resilience and urges local citizens to ban together to improve local and regional resilience. See article >

Building Urban Resilience: Principles, Tools, and Practice

• https://www.gfdrr.org/node/1948

In the coming decades, the major driver of increasing damages and losses from disasters will be the growth of populations and assets in harm’s way, especially in urban areas. Because of inadequate resources, infrastructure, services, and capacity to manage population increases, cities could face heavy losses of life and property unless governments take proactive measures. There is a critical need for a flexible and dynamic approach to building disaster resilience that goes beyond risk mitigation. Building Urban Resilience: Principles, Tools, and Practice is a practical resource designed to give planners and practitioners an intuitive way to build elements of resilience into urban governance and planning. The report guides readers in finding ways to avoid the mistakes of the past and build resilience into urban development through critical investments and integrated disaster risk management measures.

 

Click here to see the publication or download it by clicking the link below.

 

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The World Bank

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209

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Building Urban Resilience: Principles, Tools, and Practice

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PDF

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Building Urban Resilience: Principles, Tools, and Practice

Workbook on Planning for Urban Resilience

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/01/15739387/work-book-planning-urban-resilience-face-disasters-adapting-experiences-vietnams-cities-other-cities
Workbook on Planning for Urban Resilience

A work book on planning for urban resilience in the face of disasters : adapting experiences from Vietnam's cities to other cities (English)

Abstract This workbook is intended to help policy makers in developing countries plan for a safer future in urban areas in the face of natural disasters and the consequences of climate change. It is based on the experiences of three cities in Vietnam, Can Tho, Dong Hoi, and Hanoi, that worked with international and local experts under World Bank supervision to develop local resilience action plans (LRAPs) in 2009-10. An LRAP is a detailed planning document that reflects local concerns and priorities based on the experiences of the past and projections for the future. It is not a wish list of projects that may never be completed because they are too costly or lack political support. Rather, it should be a realistic document that describes and establishes priorities for specific steps that can be undertaken in the near term to adapt to both climate related and other hazards. Regardless of their size, location, political orientation, or technical capacity, other cities can learn from the experiences of these pilot cities to develop their own LRAPs. The purpose of this workbook is to adapt the initial experiences of Can Tho, Dong Hoi, and Hanoi to benefit the national government and other communities in Vietnam and beyond. Indeed, the process described in this workbook was later adopted in the cities of Iloilo, the Philippines; Ningbo, China; and Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the concluding chapter of this workbook draws on some of the lessons learned in these cities. However, the workbook, while generalizable to other contexts, largely reflects the Vietnamese experience. 

Complete Report in English

Official version of document (may contain signatures, etc)

• Official PDF, 200 pages 14.0 mb

Low-carbon society scenarios

• http://2050.nies.go.jp/index.html

The primary objective of the “Research project to Establish a Methodology to Evaluate Mid to Long Term Environmental Policy Options toward Asian Low-Carbon Societies?E(S-6 research project), is to develop comprehensive methodologies to design, calculate and evaluate the mid to long term policy options towards Low-Carbon Societies (LCSs) in Asia, which integrate robust scientific knowledge, and are sensitive to the multi-faced needs and values of each Asian country. The project also aims to formulate policy roadmaps and disseminate these for implementation.

More

Low-Carbon Society Vision 2030: Thailand		Preliminary study on Sustainable Low-Carbon Development towards 2030 in Vietnam		Low-Carbon Society Visions 2035: Ahmedabad
Japan Scenarios and Actions towards Low-Carbon Societies (LCSs)		Japan Roadmaps towards Low-Carbon Societies (LCSs)		A Roadmap towards Low-Carbon Kyoto
More Reports

Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and the Urban Poor

• http://go.worldbank.org/BPXUJ3ARJ0

Poor people living in slums are at particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable lands within cities, typically areas that are deemed undesirable by others and are thus affordable.

Residents are exposed to the impacts of landslides, sea-level rise, flooding, and other hazards. Exposure to risk is exacerbated by overcrowding living conditions, lack of adequate infrastructure and services, unsafe housing, inadequate nutrition, and poor health. These conditions can turn a natural hazard or change in climate into a disaster, and result in the loss of basic services, damage or destruction to homes, loss of livelihoods, malnutrition, disease, disability, and loss of life.

This study examines the interlinkages between climate change, disaster risk, and the urban poor, underscoring four key messages:

• The urban poor are on the front line. The poor are particularly vulnerable to climate change and natural hazards due to where they live within cities, and the lack of reliable basic services.
• City governments are the drivers for addressing risks through ensuring basic services. Local governments play a vital role in financing and managing basic infrastructure and service delivery for all urban residents. Basic services are the first line of defense against the impacts of climate change and natural hazards.
• City officials build resilience by mainstreaming risk reduction into urban management. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction can be best addressed and sustained over time through integration with existing urban planning and management practices. Good practice examples exist and can be replicated in cities around the world.
• Significant financial support is needed. Local governments need to leverage existing and new resources to meet the shortfalls in service delivery and basic infrastructure adaptation.

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