Governmental Resilience

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Governmental uses of climate change-related resilience occur at local, regional, state, national, and international scales. A comprehensive report on the uses of resilience at these various levels isn’t possible within the limited scope of this project; however, we can begin to assess governmental resilience in a selection of national and international agencies and recognize how these agencies express similar and dissimilar understandings of resilience due to the various connotations associated with the term. The groups or agencies that have been selected for this report include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Executive Office of the President of the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the US Army Corps of Engineers, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The differences between uses of resilience among these entities can be most easily identified using a set of binaries: 

measuring resilience before or after an event

resilience as restoration (“bouncing back”) or transformation ("bouncing forward”)

resilience as a process or an outcome

Of course, as with all dichotomies, these resilience binaries should not be seen as definitive, but rather as tools for understanding how one group conceptualizes resilience.

At the international level, a number chapters from IPCC reports make use of resilience. Chapter 20 of the Fifth Assessment Report, “Climate-Resilient Pathways to Sustainable Development” (2014) by Working Group II, offers development strategies that respond to the risks and concerns related to climate change impacts. The report describes climate-resilient pathways as “strategies, choices, and actions that reduce climate change and its impacts. They also include actions to ensure that effective risk management and adaptation can be implemented and sustained” (1104). In other words, a climate-resilient pathway employs both mitigation and adaptation efforts in ways where one does not impede the other. For example, adaptation may increase greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. increased fossil-based air conditioning in response to higher temperatures) while mitigation can hinder adaptation (e.g. reduced energy availability in countries with growing populations); a climate-resilient pathway, however, will integrate adaptation and mitigation responses that generate mutual benefits and promote sustainable development. To promote sustainable development within the context of climate change, climate-resilient pathways may involve significant transformations (1105). There are two types of transformation that describe two different kinds of resilience: “transformational adaptation in response to the impacts of climate change and transformational change to reduce vulnerability and the risk of high-magnitude climate change (1121). Transformational adaptation does not aim to maintain the essence and integrity of an existing system or process at a given time, as it includes actions that change the fundamental attributes of a system in response to actual or expected impacts of climate change (1121). Transformational adaptation is similar to C.S. Holling’s theory of ecological resilience, wherein resilience is a measurement of a system’s persistence before undergoing a transformation into a new system, which he calls a “regime change.” Moreover, transformational adaptation as a climate-resilient pathway is associated with measuring resilience after an event, bouncing forward rather than bouncing back, and is outcome- rather than process-oriented. Transformational change, on the other hand, is a means for reducing risk and vulnerability. This climate-resilient pathway shifts the focus from adapting to impacts of climate change to “challenging the systems and structures, economic and social relations, and beliefs and behaviors that contribute to climate change and social vulnerability” (1122). Thus, transformational change assesses resilience before an event, favors bouncing forward, and is process-oriented.

A definition of resilience and a review of its conceptualization across disciplinary fields is offered in another IPCC chapter, “Climate Change: New Dimensions in Disaster Risk, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Resilience” from the Special Report by Working Groups I and II, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (2012). The definition of resilience from the report is quoted in full:

Resilience is defined as the ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a potentially hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration, or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions. As Gaillard (2010) points out, this term has been used in disaster studies since the 1970s (Torry, 1979) and has its origins in engineering (Gordon, 1978), ecology (Holling, 1973) and child psychology (Werner et al. 1971). (34)

Although written only two years prior to the report on resilient-pathways discussed earlier, we can observe that this definition of resilience is somewhat different. This definition measures resilience both before and after climate change impacts. It also favors bouncing back rather than bouncing forward; the words “absorb,” “accommodate,” and “recover” bear different connotations than “transformation,” as they suggest that a system more or less remains the same or is restored after impact rather than undergoing a fundamental transfiguration or regime change. Moreover, although the report mentions that resilience has its origins in engineering, ecology, and child psychology, the definition offered here reflects an engineering orientation more than the other two, for it emphasizes absorbing impacts and quickly returning to equilibrium. This is quite different from C.S. Holling’s ecological resilience theory which does not measure a return to equilibrium but rather the persistence of a system before rupturing.

However, in this Special Report the IPCC also recognizes that resilience is a multifaceted term that is understood and used in different ways (34). Definitions of the term fall on either side of the binaries depending on who’s using the term and how they use it, while others prefer not to use the word at all in favor of less ambiguous terms:

…the term is used by some in reference to situations at any point along the risk “cycle” or “continuum,” that is, before, during, or after the impact of the physical event. And, in a different vein, some consider the notions of “vulnerability” and “capacity” as being sufficient for explaining the ranges of success or failure that are found in different recovery scenarios and are thus averse to the use of the term at all (Wisner et al. 2004, 2011). (34)

Indeed, resilience is used in describing situations before and after an impact (and during an event, though I have not seen any examples of this usage myself). Moreover, the report recognizes the “bouncing forward” and “bouncing back” divide:

Older conceptions of resilience, as “bouncing back,” and its conceptual cousin, coping, have implicitly emphasized a return to a previous status quo or some other marginally acceptable level, such as “surviving,” as opposed to generating a cyclical process that leads to continually improving conditions, as in “bouncing forward” and/or eventually “thriving” (Davies, 1993; Manyena, 2006). In the context of climate change, resilience as “bouncing back” to an earlier state or merely surviving is viewed as an insufficient goal for disaster risk management, and the report favors bouncing forward and thriving,  as well as emphasizing process over outcomes (34).

Despite the conservative and reactionary tenor of the definition of resilience seen earlier in the report, the authors do appear to suggest that an ecological interpretation and usage of the term might be more relevant in the context of climate change events, or at least more so than the connotations associated with engineering resilience. 

But maybe it’s all relative. Engineering resilience is especially significant when it comes to infrastructure, and the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association take this position. The Sustainability section of the The Army Corps of Engineers website features a page on “Building Climate Resilience.” The Corps outlines four phases of its resilience efforts: “planning for the impact of an event; absorbing it; recovering from it; and then adapting to be better prepared for the future.” The phases of the Corp’s climate resilience efforts are outcome-driven and are concerned with climate events rather that climate change as a continuum. They also emphasize systems absorbing and recovering from impacts—maintaining and/or returning to equilibrium. Therefore, the Army Corps of Engineers uses resilience to describe “bouncing back.” Even though the last phase does mention adaptation after an event, which may relate to the resilient-pathway of transformational adaptation, the focus appears to be on preparing to absorb impacts and efficiently return to equilibrium; the fourth phase is geared toward preparing for future impacts, and is thus a return to the first phase. However, it must also be stated that although the Army Corps of Engineers’s description of resilience relates to “bouncing back,” this does not connote merely surviving or withstanding impacts: “When we plan, absorb, respond, and adapt, we come out stronger” (emphasis added). Interestingly, the United States Army Corps of Engineers use of resilience connotes the thriving or flourishing that is more typically associated with bouncing forward.

The NOAA webpage “What is Resilience?” also expresses a bouncing back orientation, but it is also geared toward post- rather than pre-event resilience. NOAA states, “coastal resilience means building the ability of a community to ‘bounce back’ after hazardous events such as hurricanes, coastal storms, and flooding—rather than simply reacting to impacts” (emphasis added). Unlike the U.S. Army Core of Engineers’s emphasis on planning for impacts, the definition offered by NOAA emphasizes rebounding after weather and climate-related events, which includes adapting to sea level rise. Of course, NOAA does not mean to imply that preparation is not a part of its coastal resilience strategies, but the language of the webpage seems to subordinate preparation to recovery: coastal resilience is the “ability to prevent a short-term hazard event from turning into a long-term community-wide disaster.” Again, unlike Holling's ecological resilience, NOAA’s resilience is not interested in how long a community can persist during and after a climate-related event before undergoing a transformation; like engineering resilience, it is concerned with how much of the impact a community can absorb and how quickly it can return to an equilibrium state before a radical and undesired transformation (from bad to worse or hazard to disaster) takes place.

Following Hurricane Sandy (2012) and the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development created the National Disaster Resilience Competition in 2014 and made $1 billion available to communities that have been struck by natural disasters in recent years. The objective of HUD’s competition was to “promote risk assessment and planning and . . . fund the implementation of innovative resilience projects to better prepare communities for future storms and other extreme events.” The type of resilience being described here is pre-event, bouncing forward, and outcome driven. However, it is also post-event because the only eligible applicants had already experienced a disaster—all states with counties that experienced a Presidentially Declared Major Disaster in 2011, 2012, or 2013 could apply. This type of resilience, therefore, is adapting to and planning for future disasters, which corresponds to the fourth phase of the Army Corps of Engineers’s climate resilience efforts.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does use resilience as well, and it appears to be in the post-event sense of the word since it received $102 million in “resilience funding” and $65 million in “recovery funding” from the Department of the Interior through the Disaster Relief Appropriation Act of 2013 (“Hurricane Sandy Recovery”). These resilience efforts were/are focused on areas effected by Hurricane Sandy. The Service provides a list of projects that it has completed and other projects it intends to complete within the next year, but it is difficult to determine if these are “resilience” or “recovery” projects and, moreover, the Service does not explain what the difference is between a “recovery” and a “resilience” project (if there is one). At any rate, some of the projects include the following: removing hurricane debris from coastal marshes, beaches and forested areas; restoring eroded beaches to critical to various species; repairing infrastructure at wildlife refuges; removing dams to restore fish passage; and “treating” more than 2,000 acres of invasive species. Despite the resilience-recovery ambiguity, these projects are all non-adaptation, post-event, bouncing back, and outcome-oriented. They are not projects that promote transformational adaptation nor transformational change—these are restoration projects that aim to bring a system back to an earlier, equilibrium state.

Resilience is featured prominently in the The President’s Climate Action Plan (June 2013), and use of the term among many U.S. agencies and departments is influenced by this document. For example, the Climate Resilience Toolkits that can be found on NOAA and EPA websites derive from the President’s Climate Action Plan: “Federal agencies will create a virtual climate-resilience toolkit that centralizes access to data-driven resilience tools, services, and best practices, including those developed through the Climate Data Initiative” (16). Additionally, the President’s Climate Action Plan does not offer a clear definition of resilience, but the generalized use of the term does allow the Plan to apply resilience broadly and thus encapsulate the various connotations associated with the term. See for example the range of “resilience efforts” that the Plan intends to pursue:

The federal government has an important role to play in supporting community-based preparedness and resilience efforts, establishing policies that promote preparedness, protecting critical infrastructure and public resources, supporting science and research germane to preparedness and resilience, and ensuring that federal operations and facilities continue to protect and serve citizens in a changing climate. (12)

The wide-ranging use of resilience here—from protecting and supporting infrastructure, resources, and research—are all pre-event measures to ensure preparedness. However, this passage also reflects an understanding of climate change as a continuum, as “continuing to protect and serve citizens in a changing climate” indicates that we are already living in and experiencing climate change. 

Moreover, some areas of the Plan utilize engineering resilience while others utilize ecological resilience. The first section of the Plan’s outline for preparing the United States for the impacts of climate change, “Building Stronger and Safer Communities and Infrastructure,” leans toward engineering resilience—rebuilding and learning from Hurricane Sandy to form stronger, more durable infrastructure (12-14). The second section, “Protecting our Economy and Natural Resources” leans toward ecological resilience in an effort to protect resources and ecosystems: “The Administration is also implementing climate-adaptation strategies that promote resilience in fish and wildlife populations, forests, and other plant communities, freshwater resources, and ocean” (15).

The President’s Climate Action Plan contains a mix of process and outcome-oriented resilience. Most of the plan describes resilience as a process that requires ongoing research and reassessment of infrastructure. Since it recognizes climate change as a continuum, then resilience is an ongoing process of continual adaptation to a constantly changing climate. On the other hand, the Administration’s resilience efforts are also outcome-directed, the implementation of the Climate Resilience Toolkit being an example of a specific objective outlined in the Plan and thereafter carried out. 

Through this limited selection of governmental uses of resilience at various scales, we can begin to see the many nuances of term. Resilience efforts can focus on climate change as a continuum (President’s Climate Action Plan) or it can attend to climate change events (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA). These efforts can assess and develop resilience before an event (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) or after one (NOAA). Resilience can be described as a “bouncing back” to pre-existing stable state (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services”) or it can emphasize “bouncing forward” though transformational adaptation (IPCC and HUD). Finally, some see resilience as a process (IPCC and The President’s Climate Action Plan) while others vuew it as an outcome (U.S. Corps of Engineers, NOAA, EPA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services). Recognizing that resilience is a multifaceted term that signifies different things to different people and understanding its nuances will be key to any collaborative climate resilience efforts.

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