For many, the community of practice related to resilience is emerging in a similar pattern to practice of sustainability. For others, resilience and sustainability are one in the same. In either case, it’s a topic worthy of discussion. While it is unlikely that we will be able to predict the way in which concepts like ‘resilience’ continue to capture the attention of cities in the years to come. It is still important to work towards a shared definition. This is a challenge because, ‘The literature reveals many suggestions and recommendations to integrate resilience and sustainability; however, these remained at a theoretical level and were not taken to the application level’ (1). This conversation is frustrating for most of us in the field, I myself wrote a post similar to this years ago, because we are anxious to spend and take action. Nevertheless, alignment is needed before we proceed.
Finding Agreement Together
When we all play from the same sheet of music, it allows us to share methodologies and articulate a clear and consistent message across imagined boundaries like global geographies. The effort to integrate sustainability and resilience efforts is an important step in a longer journey. A journey towards creating a holistic design mentality. It won’t be easy; indeed, articulating the similarities and differences between ‘resilience’ and ‘disaster resilience’ will take time.
Pushing the dialogue forward on integrating these concepts will help us strengthen our network and align our Subject Matter Expertise so that the whole is greater than the sum of our parts. Teams with broad expertise already work together to deliver expertise and value to clients; the following points are likely to echo the points made on our calls, posts, and extensive email chains. Many times, the passions that drive us keep our alignment headed in the same direction. However, there are at least three approaches that must be considered when we work to integrate the concepts of resilience and sustainability.
These include: 1) Synchronizing Concepts and Terminology, 2) Offering an Interdisciplinary Approach, and 3) Fostering Integrated Complex Systems Thinking. Quite a mouthful, and certainly something that can’t be solved in a short blog post, but hopefully we can seize the opportunity to move forward as we take on wicked global problems.
It’s also important to realize, however, that articulating a concept or sales message rarely impacts actual delivery. It doesn’t matter if dealing with drought in Indonesia falls within a sustainability, resilience, water or energy expertise. This is further evidence of what I discuss on this blog, that we need to focus on teamwork instead of administration. During this current crisis, this is even more apparent. Contracts and litigation cannot be the driving force behind global solutions. Avoiding that in favor of collaboration will require societal change.
Synchronizing Concepts and Terminology
It’s hard to play from the same sheet of music if we can’t understand the notes. One of the best examples of the difficulty of aligning terminology on this subject is the difference between ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’. In climate science, mitigation is related to the reduction of the cause of risk (C02 Emissions); adaptation addresses risk (establishment of natural barriers).
One of the primary roles within the resilience community of practice is the Disaster Manager. In this profession’s vernacular, mitigation is equated with ‘hazard mitigation’ which is essentially actions taken to reduce risk. This is one of those contradictions that you only see when you get into the weeds on a subject. It is a real tension in the community. While this tension is actually the result of a grey are between an emerging (climate science) and established (Disaster Management) field. Understanding that the contradiction exists allows us to engage stakeholders effectively and harness their expertise.
This is similar to the early tensions when defining terms like ‘sustainability’ against ‘green building’ and ‘environmentalism’. Determining what umbrella terms and concepts were correct allowed for a shared system of beliefs to be articulated. It can be argued that there is little to be gained by splitting hairs on what it means to build sustainably v. build resiliently,. We can expect that forces will coalesce around the appropriate verbiage in the coming years. Choosing whether we want to be part of that conversation should be secondary to our listening to it.
Offering an Interdisciplinary Approach
Contrary to this first approach towards integrating resilience and sustainability, it doesn’t really matter if we are speaking the same vernacular so long as we work as a team. The robust nature of our practice groups, the sheer number of our employees, and the extensive scope and shape of our projects allows experts to provide interdisciplinary professional services in ways that niche firms specializing in sustainability or resilience cannot.
As the ivory tower ponders the best ways to solve wicked problems, as niche firms work to develop pilot projects, and while clients struggle to deliver return on investment with limited resources, planers are building cities. When we put boots on the ground, we are forced to reconcile a range of needs. Our interdisciplinary teams work together as a collected enterprise to build bike lanes and highways, parks and shopping centers, even bus stops and airports. While it is important to develop verbiage, experts are expected to futureproof today. The reason we can do this effectively is because people are the heart of a planners process, and our collaboration allow us to work together with experts specialized in recovering from disasters.
When clients engage consultants and experts, they expect nothing less than a solution. Clients are savvy and they know the consequence of a singular focus. As we engage the subject of resilience in communities, there is an expectation that we will be able to: understand the impacts of global carbon output, the range of those impacts on hydrogeology, options for addressing inundation of a water table, and the subsequent costs and benefits of options to provide fresh water to residents. A firm with seven people that is focused on flood recovery cannot engage with this depth (no pun intended), an Ivy League college can’t deploy the resources needed to address a problem of this scope, national interests will need help to do everywhere it needs to be done. Solving these problems is the consultants exist; providing a multigenerational plan is a reality but it doesn’t answer the mail. I am curious to see what CROs and 100 RC’s efforts yield as I have seen many successes with a multi-prong approach; I am particularly interested in what financing shapes the implementation.
Fostering Integrated, Complex Systems Thinking
Specialized firms are integrators of subject matter expertise, and are currently working to articulate an important message – turn our silos into pipelines. Many groups are already to working to incorporate systems-level thinking at the city and neighborhood scale. This will require more than unquantifiable approaches to the triple bottom line. EcoPlan is one of my mentors’ preferred approaches. It is unique in that it considers all technical disciplines from the offset, for example water, transport, infrastructure and more. The best planners ignore terms in favor of a holistic approach that incorporates both resilience and sustainability principles. Beyond resilience and sustainability, these types of approaches allow us to identify connections with other needs like Health by Design, Economic Development, and Social Justice.
When we were at university, we could simply cite notions that say : ‘Extending the use of resilience to social–ecological systems makes it possible to explicitly deal with issues raised by Holling (1986) about renewal, novelty, innovation and reorganization in system development and how they interact across scales ’ (2). Bringing all this into practice is another story, and my generation looks forward to telling it.
1 – Nebil Achour, Efthimia Pantzartzis, Federica Pascale, Andrew D. F. Price, (2015) “Integration of resilience and sustainability: from theory to application”, International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Vol. 6 Issue: 3, pp.347-362, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJDRBE-05-2013-0016)
2 – Folke, C., S. R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockström. 2010. Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/).
Photo by Martin Damboldt from Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/@mdx014?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels)