Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

97 (Alexander, 2005) which, despite longstanding academic critique (McEntire et al., 2002; Neal, 1997), are persistent in practice. Resilience actions undertaken by the community can be related to these phases (e.g. weather forecasting and warning as preparedness action). Accordingly, civil protection is focusing on hazard specific actions. We add to this social protection considerations, which include hazard independent resilience actions, e.g. measures of vulnerability reduction and building social safety nets (see Fig. 1). Social protection action includes diverse types of actions intended to provide community members with the resources necessary to improve their living standards to a point at which they are no longer dependent upon external sources of assistance (Davies et al., 2008). Social protection has been included as a main component because many resilience building actions cannot be directly attributed to civil protection action but are instead concerned with the more general pursuit of well-being and sustainability (Davies et al., 2013; Heltberg et al., 2009). For example, the presence of an active community-based voluntary and/or charity sector capable of providing social support (e.g. food banks) and funding for participatory community endeavours (e.g. a community fund) and which could be extended or expanded in times of acute, disaster-induced, community need were found to be factors that provide a certain level of security for all those affected by hazards, either directly or indirectly (Dynes, 2005). Such social protection measures are not, however, delivered solely by the community and voluntary sector alone, so it is important to understand that these elements also relate to the much broader provision of welfare services (health, education, housing, etc.), which are ultimately the responsibility of national and local government. The inclusion of social protection as a main component of this domain therefore represents an important progression over some other frameworks, because it explicitly includes the consideration of how communities manifest resilience through their capacity to deal with and adapt to natural hazards but also their capacity to contribute equitably to reducing the wider livelihood-based risks faced by some, if not all, of their membership. In a case study in northern England, social support mechanisms were particularly important across multiple communities (from hill farmers to town dwellers) in the aftermath of a flood event (Deeming et al., 2018a). Key considerations were that, despite evidence of learning and adaption that had occurred between two floods in 2005 and 2009, the sheer magnitude of the latter event effectively discounted the effects of any physical mitigation and civil protection measures that had been introduced. Where non-structural measures, such as community emergency planning, had been adopted there were significant improvements in the levels and successes of response activity. However, while these actions reduced some damage (e.g. fewer vehicles flooded), where properties were inundated significant damage still resulted. Accordingly, community champions emerged who were capable of advocating community outcomes and the need for community spaces (e.g. groups or buildings) where those affected could learn by sharing experiences and deliberating plans. They proved to be key in driving the recovery as well as the concurrently occurring future mitigation efforts. Much of the support in the aftermath of the flood events was coordinated by particular officers from the statutory authorities, whose “normal” roles and skills were social rather than civil protection orientated. This emphasised the importance of understanding resilience in framework terms as a practice-encompassing process rather than as a simple measure of hazard response capability. 4.1.3 Learning Learning is the third integral domain that shapes intra-community resilience in the emBRACE framework. We attempt to provide a detailed conceptualization of learning in the context of community resilience. We follow the notion of social learning that may lead to a number of social outcomes, acquired skills and knowledge building via collective and communicative learning (Muro and Jeffrey, 2008). It occurs formally and informally, often in natural and unforced settings via conversation and mutual interest. Further, social learning is said to be most successful when the practice is spread from person to person (Reed et al., 2010) and embedded in social networks (McCarthy et al., 2011). In this understanding, social learning is an ongoing, adaptive process of knowledge creation that is scaled-up from individuals through social interactions fostered by critical reflection and the synthesis of a variety of knowledge types that result in changes to social structures (e.g. organizational mandates, policies, social norms) (Matyas and Pelling, 2015). Based on this understanding we conceptualise social learning as consisting of different elements from the perception of risks or losses, its problematization, to the critical reflection and testing/experimentation in order to derive new knowledge which can be disseminated throughout and beyond the community, enabling resilience at a range of societal levels (see Fig. 1). The first element, risk and loss perception, is the ability of any actor, organization or institution to have awareness of future disaster risk or to feel the impact of a current or past hazard event. Awareness can be derived from scientific or other forms of knowledge. Second, the ability to problematize risk and loss arises once a threshold of risk tolerance has passed. A problematization of risk manifests itself as the perception of an actor that potential or actual disaster losses or the current achieved benefit-to-cost ratio of risk management are inappropriate. This includes procedural and distributional justice concerns and has the potential to generate momentum for change. Third, critical reflection on the appropriateness of technology, values and governance frames can lead to a questioning of the risk-related social contract of the community. Critical reflection is proposed as a mechanism through which to make sense of what is being learned before applying it to thinking or actions. Fourth, experimentation and innovation refers to testingmultiple approaches to solve a riskmanagement problem in the knowledge that they will have variable individual levels of success. This can shift risk management to a new efficiency mode where experimentation is part of the short-term cost of resilience and of long-term risk reduction. In this context, innovation can be conceptualised as processes that derive an original proposition for a risk management intervention. This can include importing knowledge from other places or policy areas as well as advances based on new information and knowledge generation.