Gina Castillo is the Agriculture Program Manager at Oxfam America.

Most of us think that accidents are unforeseeable and not preventable. But that is not the case when it comes to why people who are poor are hit again and again by events that make it difficult for them to escape poverty.

Today Oxfam released a new report, No Accident: Resilience and the Inequality of Risk. The report shows that disaster risk is being dumped on to millions of people living in poverty because of climate change and because of unfair practices.

Take weather-related events as an example. Due to urbanization and climate change, there are increasingly more people living in places that are susceptible to disasters. Since 1970 the number of people exposed to floods and cyclones has doubled. Those are the “big shocks”—the ones that get media attention and galvanize donors and governments into action, as was certainly the case when Haiti suffered its devastating earthquake in January 2010. Yet, there are also “small shocks” such as illness, death, or a harvest failure, that can push a family that is just hanging on to destitution.

Consider this figure below, which shows how one family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti coped in the year after the 2010 earthquake, which sadly killed two of their youngest boys. The father lost his job and the family was heavily reliant friends and neighbors who provided them with most of their meals until mid-May, as well as emergency-related grants and services. After this, they were forced to sell their livestock. An Oxfam grant allowed them to pay off their debts and to start a small business, but their household income still dropped by 88 per cent. Unfortunately, the shocks continued. The family invested in a market garden, which was later destroyed by Hurricane Tomas in October 2010. They also bought food to sell, but some of this was looted during election violence in November 2010.

Figure 1: One family’s experience after the 2010 Haiti earthquake

We highlight this family’s story because it is not atypical.  People work hard to get out of poverty, as studies have shown.

So why is it so difficult for people to get ahead? In the aid world, we talk often of vulnerability. But we cannot talk about vulnerability as a random twist of fate. It’s about politics, power, and inequality. As a result, risk is dumped on poor countries and their inhabitants, asis certainly the case for climate change. 50% of carbon emissions are generated by 11% of people, the consequences of which are left to poor countries and the most vulnerable are the hardest hit. Women often face higher risks because of gender discrimination and cultural norms, yet shoulder the burden of managing families. They have fewer opportunities economically, resulting in lower income and fewer options when it comes to managing risk.

Why does this happen? Our research showed that while measuring vulnerability is difficult, countries with more vulnerable populations also tend to be those with greater income inequality. Governments need to tackle inequality and ensure that risk is better shared across society. Thankfully there is increasing awareness that excessive inequality is corrosive to growth.

Aid cannot fix inequality and disproportionate risk. Governments can. Targeted action to support society’s most vulnerable (basic services such as education health, and access to decision-making) is needed to even out inequalities, reduce risk, and build resilience.

Because some accidents are preventable.

Somalia

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Pastoralists and their camels on the road in southern Somalia. Photo by Njoroge/Oxfam

For the last few weeks, whenever I could get a quiet moment, I’ve been trying to read and think about resilience. It seems like the whole development and humanitarian sector is rapturous about resilience. And already, there’s a bit of backlash.

A lot of smart people are taking up the theme, and I think we should. As a frame for thinking about policy and programming, I think there’s a lot of utility in it.  One of the primary innovations of a focus on resilience is that it presumes an unstable and adverse external environment. This is a big advantage because, actually, reality presents a lot of unstable and adverse situations for poor people. My colleague Gina points out that presuming a stable environment is a big weakness of other frameworks, for example the sustainable livelihoods approach, which is one of the most important tools in development practice.

But if resilience has advantages, there must also be some disadvantages and cautions.

One of the most important is to define resilience in a way that’s useful—which is to say that excludes some things as NOT resilience. This is a big problem in the field right now, where it feels like some people are simply redrafting existing plans to include resilience as a goal or an outcome. In that case, maybe we were building resilience all along? If building resilience is something, then it can’t be everything. If it’s everything, then it’s actually not a thing.

So—a lot of my thinking lately has been to try to create a useful, exclusionary definition of resilience that has operational and policy value. To do this, I’ve been trying to disentangle some issues around resilience.  Here goes:

1.Resilience of what? What are we concerned with? The individual, the household, the village, the community, the region, the country, a financial system, a supply-chain, a farming system, an institution? It matters. If you prioritize one, you are probably undermining others. This isn’t absolutely true: building resilience of some component units can contribute to the resilience of larger units. But the opposite can be true also. So which one is important? How do we select? As a rights-based organization, I have to think that Oxfam would prioritize the resilience of individuals. Or maybe households. Possibly villages. But I’m not totally sure.

2. Resilience is an attribute not a form of support. I think resilience is a characteristic of the individual (or household or community, see item #1 above). Resilience might be improved through outside intervention; building assets, reducing risk exposure, preparing response. But outside intervention during or after a shock is not resilience—it’s assistance. Providing a robust safety net for people when they experience shocks is a good and important thing to do. But it is not building the resilience of beneficiaries and is a different species altogether than resilience-building. On the other hand, you might argue that a robust safety net program builds the resilience of a country to shocks. But not the beneficiaries, unless there’s a program of DRR or asset building that is part of the assistance.

3. Is resilience multi-dimensional or not? Can one build resilience against a variety of shocks at once? It seems to me that it’s best not to presume that resilience to one form of shock—let’s say a drought—implies resilience to another—say an earthquake or economic crisis. One might try to address them together, but the intervention probably needs to have distinctive strategies for each. Or no? Some forms of resilience assets—like having a significant cash reserve or a diversified household livelihood—seem to help build resilience across many potential hazards. When we think about resilience, should we organize around the individual’s (or other unit, see #1 above) resilience to various potential shocks? Or should we organize ourselves around each possible hazard and think about how to improve resilience each in turn; to drought, to earthquakes, to currency inflation, etc.?  Intuitively, we probably want to do the former, but it might not be an effective way to organize action and allocate resources.

4. Shocks v. stresses. Does resilience address both shocks and stress? A shock is an idiosyncratic event. A stress in a longer-term condition. Some materials can absorb stresses better than shocks; quantum of energy, applied in an instant, will break an iron rod. The same amount of energy applied over an hour has no effect. But maybe I’m making a distinction without a difference? Personally, I think resilience is about response to shocks. Using climate change as an example, long-term trends like rising sea levels and hotter temperatures would create a stress and require adaptation. But shorter-term events like hurricanes and droughts are shocks that test resilience.  They’re clearly related in their genesis, but different in their impacts and response strategy? Or am I wrong?

5. Resilience v. resourcefulness? In usage, these terms can seem interchangeable. “The Somali pastoralists are very resourceful; they find water even in the midst of a drought.” Ironically, we often use the word “resourceful” to describe people without resources. You wouldn’t call a rich family resourceful—because, indeed, they are full of resources. But you call a poor family resourceful when they send their kids to college by hook or by crook, i.e. DESPITE a lack of resources. Observers wonder at the “resourcefulness” of others largely because they don’t understand the real access and control over resources that they have. So seeing someone as “resourceful” probably reflect the ignorance of the observer more than the actual characteristics of the observed. Is there something similar in resilience? Do we understand an individual/household/community as resilient only because we are so ignorant of its assets and strategies that we don’t understand how shocks are accommodated?

6. Resilience is a floor. I think resilience is—and should be—a pretty sad goal. That is, if a definition of resilience is rigorous, it should set a baseline of survival; a floor, but not a ceiling. Resilience is the capacity to resist, withstand, and recover from shocks. That doesn’t mean becoming happy, healthy, or rich. Just getting through it and back to normal. Really, that’s aiming pretty low. And our hopes and aspirations for one another are a lot higher than that. But if we are honest, even resilience is often beyond our reach. Much of the energy behind the new fad of resilience is coming from the humanitarian response community. They are recognizing that the mismatch between the response capacity and the need for assistance is growing wider. Motivated as much by frustration as by a positive vision, they are saying we need a new paradigm. We can’t keep responding to droughts in the same way; we have to build up the resilience of communities to withstand them. My humanitarian colleague points out that part of the frustration is that the livelihoods and development programmers have ignored shocks and resilience, so the humanitarians end up having to pick up the pieces.

More thoughts soon.

As I see it, the banker was saying that one system was more resilient, even though in terms of the economies of scale, the consolidated model might have had some advantages. But in the interest of social and economic stability, having more people and farms provided a better hedge against collapse.

With an expanding global population, communities and nations must face the question of which model suits their needs as erratic weather, volatile markets, finite arable land and fresh water tightens the vice on the global food system.  Now that extreme heat and drought are sweeping across my own farm and across more than 1,000 counties in 26 states, I’ve considered some of the things that my neighbors do to buffer the impacts of both environmental and economic shocks.

First, two miles to the south, Roman and Ruth Miller used to only grow wheat, row crops, and cattle. About 15 years ago, they took about a quarter of an acre out of conventional crop production, and started a modest market garden. Since that time, the vegetable production has expanded; they built several hoop houses to extend the growing season; and with the assistance of their children, the Millers became more and more adept at marketing. Roman still has wheat and cattle, but he has created a side enterprise that has allowed him to become more profitable and economically secure without having to buy more land or invest in more expensive machinery. (The role of entrepreneurship and farm diversification is covered well in work by Cornelia and Jan Flora , and Karl Stauber)

Roman Miller (left) with customer at farmers’ market. Credit: Jim French

Next, I think about my friend, Gene Albers, who farms about 30 miles from my operation. Gene incorporates cover crops into his diversified crop and livestock operation.  He believes that conserving soil is not enough. A farmer should improve the soil through building up organic matter and biological activity. By planting mixes that might contain seeds of turnips, Japanese radishes, black oats, barley, pearl millet, and Austrian peas, Gene can create ground covers that shade the soil, penetrate compacted soil, and capture nitrogen. By grazing livestock on crop residues and cover crops, Gene has been able to capture more value while effectively recycling nutrients.

Grain sorghum growing in cover crop residue on author’s farm. Credit: Jim French

Finally, I think about my brother-in-law, Jamie Funke. Jamie married the daughter of a farmer who taught vocational agriculture at the local high school. Jamie also has a career in education working at the area community college. He farms 320 acres of wheat, soybeans, and grain sorghum in his spare time. Like the majority of his neighbors and the  majority of American farmers, having an off-farm job allows Jamie to remain a productive farmer with access to affordable insurance, and a steady source of cash flow.

Three farms. Three strategies for stability, resilience, and success. The Millers have concentrated on agricultural enterprise diversification and entrepreneurship;  Albers focuses on building the health and productivity of the soil; Funke has found that off-farm employment can better ensure his continued engaging in farming.

Right now, we are all in our second year of severe drought – a situation similar to the one plaguing rural people in the Sahel, and regions in the  Horn of Africa. The ramifications of the drought are different – people in Africa face food emergencies and possible famine.  However,  my neighborhood examples provide some element of what investing in resilience might look like regardless of location.

Facing the challenges of increased flooding, longer lasting droughts, and volatile markets may mean that the monoculture, mega-farm will not be the best target for emerging agriculture in the developing world.  What may be the more stable, and resilient models could depend more upon investing  in smaller operations that enable entrepreneurship, off-farm income generation, and agro-ecological strategies, which build soil and conserve water.

Extreme weather is putting climate change back on the radar this summer. Record high heat in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic, raging wildfires in the Rockies, deadly wind and thunder storms, and a drought covering more than half of the country have people connecting the dots between climate change and extreme weather events.

But it’s not just weather reports that are telling the story.  Now businesses are also connecting extreme weather and climate change to their bottom lines.

It’s no wonder that some businesses have noticed the seriousness of what’s happening on the climate front.  Nine of out ten companies have suffered weather-related impacts in the past three years and most have seen an intensification of such impacts. The 2011 record-setting drought in Texas, for example, cost the agricultural sector at least $7.6 billion dollars. In the words of the CEO of Duke Energy, “If we’re not ready, we’re in trouble.”

But while some businesses recognize the impact that climate change is having on their supply chains and operations, many say they do not feel sufficiently informed to take action, especially when it comes to how they relate to vulnerable communities. Today, leading companies from the food and beverage, insurance, investment, technology, and energy industries are hoping to fill that gap with a new guide and tool-kit.

The companies engaged in PREP (Partnership for Resilience and Environmental Preparedness) have just released a first-of-its-kind step-by-step guide—the Value Chain Climate Resilience Guide—to spur corporate executives and senior managers to integrate climate resilience throughout their value chains, including how they address climate impacts that are harming vulnerable communities.

The guide includes Business ADAPT, a step-by-step tool designed for businesses to assess and prepare for the risks and opportunities posed by climate change. The tool follows five basic steps to help companies understand the risks they face, take into account the needs of vulnerable communities, identify emerging market opportunities, and effectively manage threats to their bottom line. Each step includes a series of guiding questions that are inspired by existing good practice and are designed to focus on the connection between value chains and community and ecosystem vulnerabilities.

More detailed guidance is provided for sectors that are considered highly vulnerable, including water and energy utilities and companies in the food, beverage, agriculture, and general manufacturing industries.

The Value Chain Climate Resilience guide marks an important step forward in corporate sustainability. By helping businesses manage risks and tap into market opportunities associated with climate change, these businesses are paving the way towards addressing the impacts of a changing climate on companies and communities.

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

- Attributed to Mark Twain

 The advent of climate change has given a tragic new meaning to Twain’s joke. When he said it, nobody could do anything about the weather, or so he thought. Now we know that we’ve been changing the weather for many decades.

Notwithstanding failed legislation and disappointing international summits, we should be doing a lot more about the weather. And we should prepare for what the changing weather is going to do to us.

Which brings me to the topic of resilience. Resilience is in vogue at the moment as a conceptual frame for the development community. There are lots of new initiatives and new projects designed to improve resilience—mostly in the context of the recent and ongoing food crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahelian region.

Now, this is focus on resilience should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s an easy word to use and the art of communication is bending words to mean what you want. A lot of existing programs and initiatives are being slotted under “building resilience” just because it’s a useful marketing strategy and seems more forward-looking.

But a focus on resilience, if taken seriously, reflects a pretty serious shift in paradigm, I would argue.

Here are two definitions of resilience:

1. The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy.

2. The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.

These are important qualities and valuable characteristics. I’m certain that there are things that people can do to improve their resilience and that understanding and promoting resilience is a very important goal.

But if we are going to pursue this goal, it’s useful to understand what it is not. Here are some things that I think resilience is not:

• Income. While income and wealth almost certainly contribute to improved resilience, they are not the same thing. Poor people and communities can be resilient—in fact we know they can be.
• Strength. Just because an organism is strong, does not make it resilient. In nature, there all sorts of niches and strategies, and being strong is only one of them. In fact, being weak but resilient is a viable survival strategy.
• Power. Here, I mean political power. Political power means the ability to command resources—which contributes to the resilience of those who hold power. But there’s no reason to think that very disenfranchised groups or very isolated communities can’t be very resilient. In the definition above, the ability to restore oneself can be in “ability” or in “property”. “Ability” can be thought of as power. But “property” in this usage is more like an attribute; something inherent to itself and not reliant on external resources.

Growth. When I imagine something resilient, I think of this:

http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/5188

A tree growing on a rough, rocky mountain face. The tree withstands extreme conditions and survives. But surviving is not the same as thriving. In better conditions, the same tree might be 10 times bigger, healthier, more productive.

So. Resilience has a lot to do with surviving shocks, being flexible, and returning to an original state. In some ways, that might seem like a pretty low ambition. Shouldn’t we be setting the bar a lot higher than that? After all, more than 500 million people pulled themselves out of poverty in the last 30 years in China alone.

Well, yes and no. Standing still actually sounds pretty good if you’re in the middle of landslide. Or a famine. Or a war.

One of the critical questions we have to ask is; do we think the future is the same as the past? If so, we can build on what worked in the past. If not, we need to try to understand new trends and adjust.

Without being paranoid or panicked, I think our world is changing and systems of all kinds are becoming more fragile and more volatile. Certainly this is true with the weather—due to the slow-onset, but steady changes brought by climate change. But it seems there may be more fragility and volatility in other systems as well, like food markets, financial systems, and possibly governance.

If that’s true, then a focus on resilience makes a lot of sense. It shouldn’t mean an abandonment of other goals. But improving the ability to survive and restore ourselves from shocks could be a critical investment that keeps us moving in the right direction. And planning on a benign future could contribute to disaster. As Twain said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

Afternote on “resilience” versus “resiliency”:  Apparently, there is no difference in the word meanings and they are both correct. Globally, use of “resilience” is more common, including in the US. However, Americans use “resiliency” more than other countries do. Here’s their comparative usage in the US.

Source: grammarist.com