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2017 | Buch

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The Community Resilience Reader

Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval

herausgegeben von: Daniel Lerch

Verlag: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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This volume offers a new vision for creating resilience, through essays by leaders in such varied fields as science, policy, community building, and urban design. It combines a fresh look at the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working with community issues on the ground. It shows that resilience is a process, not a goal; how resilience requires learning to adapt but also preparing to transform; and that resilience starts and ends with the people living in a community. Despite the formidable challenges we face, this book shows that building strength and resilience at the community level is not only crucial, but possible.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Abstract

FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS, the world community has tried to resolve the combined challenges of environmental degradation, fossil fuel dependence, economic inequality, and persistent social injustice, largely under the banner of internationally brokered “sustainable development.” Despite some partial successes, it is clear today that the pace of these global trends has not been slowed, let alone stopped or reversed. The scale of these trends has grown, and their effects have become so widespread that they now threaten the stability—in some cases, even the existence—of communities around the world. The global sustainability challenges of the past have become the local resilience crises of today.

Daniel Lerch

Chapter 1. Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience

Abstract

EFFORTS TO BUILD COMMUNITY RESILIENCE often focus on growing the capacity to “bounce back” from disruptions, like those caused by climate change. But climate change is not the only crisis we face, nor is preparing for disruption the only way to build resilience. Truly robust community resilience should do more. It should engage and benefit all community members, and it should consider all the challenges the community faces, from rising sea levels to a lack of living wage jobs. In addition, it should be grounded in resilience science, which tells us how complex systems—like human communities—can adapt and persist through changing circumstances.

Daniel Lerch

Understanding Our Predicament

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. The Environmental Crisis: The Needs of Humanity versus the Limits of the Planet

Abstract

CLIMBING UP THE MIGHTY HIMALAYAS to see the source of the Ganges. Walking the Tibetan plateau, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, and hiking the Ngorongoro crater. Experiencing the Gran Sabana and lush Amazonia. Gliding through the Everglades and the Okavango delta. Chasing the aurora borealis and the aurora australis. These and other experiences are penned down in my list of places to go and things to do. They are places that remind me of the beautiful planet we inhabit, places that remind me of forces and processes that have existed for billions of years. They offer a spectacular and awe-inspiring window into a world, a symphony, that humanity is but a small part of, even though we are part of it nonetheless, perhaps even an integral part. We humans definitely did not construct or design this world, and this show of nature and natural events will continue well beyond our lifetimes. But for how much longer?

Leena Iyengar

Chapter 3. The Energy Crisis: From Fossil Fuel Abundance to Renewable Energy Constraints

Abstract

THE TERM ENERGY CRISIS was on nearly everyone’s lips in the 1970s; today it is not. However, the challenges now facing the world’s energy systems are arguably far greater than those of the 1970s, and most available evidence suggests that they are about to get more daunting still.

Richard Heinberg

Chapter 4. The Economic Crisis: The Limits of Twentieth-Century Economics and Growth

Abstract

ECONOMIC GROWTH IS A RECENT PHENOMENON in human history, becoming noticeable within a single lifetime only since the eighteenth century (i.e., since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the development of the modern market economy, and the transition to fossil fuels). Just prior to the Industrial Revolution, it took the English economy more than 400 years to double in size. Growth rates steadily increased thereafter, with a great acceleration in economic growth, resource depletion, waste emissions, and ecological degradation beginning around 1950. The global economy grew ninefold in the twentieth century even as population quadrupled. According to World Bank data, the global economy’s most recent doubling in size (as measured by gross domestic product) took just more than a decade, from 2003 to 2014.

Joshua Farley

Chapter 5. The Equity Crisis: The True Costs of Extractive Capitalism

Abstract

INEQUALITY IS A PROBLEM as old as the hills. As long as people have competed for resources and status, there have always been some who acquired more at the expense of others, whether through luck, skill, guile, or violence. With the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century came a new set of economic systems that served to benefit those with wealth and extract from those without. Among them was modern capitalism, the system adopted by most of the western world. In the United States in particular, capitalism was combined with a political system that compensated for only some of its inherited and created inequities (and that generally has done so unequally along racial lines).

Sarah Byrnes, Chuck Collins

Chapter 6. The Roots of Our Crises: Does Human Nature Drive Us toward Collapse?

Abstract

IT HAS BECOME THE STUFF of daily headlines: the world is in overshoot, with humans wrecking the environment, destroying their own habitat, and undermining the functional integrity of the very biophysical systems upon which they are dependent. Strident warnings of ecological crisis and runaway climate change have gone virtually unheeded for decades. Indeed, the human ecological footprint has expanded exponentially with population and consumption since the early nineteenth century. Brief remissions in recent years are attributable not to deliberate policy correctives but rather to temporary economic setbacks.

William Rees

Gathering the Needed Tools

Frontmatter

Chapter 7. Systems Literacy: A Toolkit for Purposeful Change

Abstract

LIFE IS FULL OF UNKNOWNS and rich with complexities. Two people experiencing a situation might interpret it differently. Even familiar situations might take unpredictable turns.

Howard Silverman

Chapter 8. A Crash Course in the Science of Sustainability

Abstract

WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY? Sustainability means enduring into the long-term future; it refers to systems and processes that are able to operate and persist on their own over long periods of time. The adjective sustainable means “able to continue without interruption” or “able to endure without failing.” The word sustainability comes from the Latin verb sustinēre, “to maintain, sustain, support, endure,” made from the roots sub, “up from below,” and tenēre, “to hold.” The German equivalent, Nachhaltigkeit, first appeared in the 1713 forestry book Sylvicultura Oeconomica written by Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a mining administrator in a region whose mining and metallurgy industry depended on timber and who realized that deforestation could cause the local economy to collapse. Carlowitz described how, through sustainable management of this renewable resource, forests could supply timber indefinitely.

Margaret Robertson

Chapter 9. A Crash Course in the Science of Resilience

Abstract

WE LIVE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES. As the human population grows, the variety of life declines, ice caps shrink, and our Earth system behaves in ways its species have never experienced. The past no longer provides us with a guide to how the future will behave, and we search for solutions while moving into an increasingly uncertain space. In such a time, resilience science provides important insights to help communities engage with the complex set of challenges they need to navigate.

Brian Walker, David Salt

Chapter 10. Pulling It All Together: Resilience, Wisdom, and Beloved Community

Abstract

LIKE MANY IN MY DAY, I have from time to time sought counsel and insight in psychotherapy. Back in the 1970s when I was a young ecology activist in San Francisco, I had a few thought-provoking sessions with Sterling Bunnell, a Jungian psychiatrist and naturalist. Many years later, Gnosis magazine published an interview with him, which caught and has held my attention to this day. It was titled “Nature and the Numinous.” The conversation ranged widely and was revelatory and realistic, a learned man’s consideration of the cosmos and microcosmos, of evolution, extinction, climate change, and cultures; of human purposes and human prospects within the matrix of the living world. Each of us, of course, must glean wisdom whence we can. It may be idiosyncratic, but these thoughts from my long-ago shrink have stayed with me.

Stephanie Mills

Community Resilience in Action

Frontmatter

Chapter 11. Energy Democracy

Abstract

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BUILD the resilience of our communities with regard to energy? What energy alternatives represent real solutions to the economic, environmental, and equity crises confronting our civilization?

Denise Fairchild, Al Weinrub

Chapter 12. Building Community Resilience at the Water’s Edge

Abstract

Water is essential to life, from the inner space of our bodies to the outer space of planetary bodies. When we explore distant planets, we look for evidence of water as a sign of possible or past life.

Rebecca Wodder

Chapter 13. Food System Lessons from Vermont

Abstract

HUMAN ACTIVITIES ARE UNDERMINING the life support systems of the planet and triggering catastrophic changes. Today, on land, sea, and in the air, the signs of resource depletion, ecosystem degradation, and anthropogenic climate change are widespread. Food system activities are both a major driver of these changes and particularly vulnerable to them. The ability of food systems to prepare, mitigate, and adapt will be a major challenge for all societies.

Scott Sawyer

Chapter 14. Learning Our Way toward Resilience

Abstract

IN THE SIMPLEST TERMS, resilience education is about building our individual and community capacities to flourish in times of tremendous transition. It strengthens our ability to weather the inevitable adversity that comes with system transformation. It gives us a systems lens through which to understand the forces driving change at multiple scales. It harnesses the creative energy of people, enabling work across cultural divides to increase the sustainability of our social-ecological systems. At its heart, it cultivates virtues like courage, humility, and frugality, which help us preserve what we most value in our communities.

William Throop

Chapter 15. Beyond Waste: Sustainable Consumption for Community Resilience

Abstract

OUR CURRENT GLOBAL SYSTEM of production and consumption of goods and services is not working for the planet, nor for its people and communities. Economic growth demands ever greater levels of consumption of newer, better, and cheaper products. Such consumption, however, undermines environmental quality, compounds inequity, and burdens communities with mounting waste management costs. It also leaves people increasingly overworked and anxious to keep up, not just with the Joneses down the street but with the wealthiest elite across the globe.

Rosemary Cooper

Chapter 16. Resilient Streets, Resilient Cities

Abstract

WHEN YOU HEAR THE WORD city or community, the first image that comes to mind is probably of a street: specifically a roadway and sidewalks, framed by buildings and full of people. We intuitively know that a street is more than just pavement and vehicles.

Mike Lydon

Chapter 17. Community Resilience and the Built Environment

Abstract

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT—buildings and infrastructure—consists of the most tangible things we associate with a community. Threatened by extreme weather events, earthquakes, obsolescence, and age, the built environment has also been the predominant focus of efforts to build resilience in our communities.

Daniel Lerch

Chapter 18. Conclusion: Where to Start

Abstract

AMERICANS (AND MANY PEOPLE elsewhere in the world) are struggling to understand and respond to a dramatically shifted political reality following the 2016 US general election. For those concerned about the climate crisis, environmental protection, social justice, and other so-called progressive causes, these are worrisome days indeed.

Asher Miller

Backmatter

Titel: The Community Resilience Reader
herausgegeben von: Daniel Lerch
Verlag: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-61091-861-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-61091-930-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-861-9