Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

165 Measuring Resilience is Not Enough; WeMust Apply the Research. Researchers and Practitioners Need a Common Language to Make This Happen by Douglas M. Glandon This article was originally published in Ecology & Society, 20(2), 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07576-200227 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license ABSTRACT This article is contributed by a practitioner in the area of country-level health systems strengthening who also has a background in resilience research. The intent of the article is to offer constructive reflection on the disconnect between the insights of resilience research and the application of those insights through development assistance. The primary reason for the existence of this communication block is that resilience research findings are not often translated in a format that is useful to those implementing resilience promotion projects. As a result, implementers do not usually review relevant research to guide their interventions. Resilience researchers and practitioners need a common language, one that arises from effective community engagement. Keywords: community resilience; development assistance; research to action RESILIENCE IS EXPERIENCED AS A SOCIAL NARRATIVE, NOT AS A SET OF NUMBERS Although details vary from place to place, wherever you travel in the world, sooner or later you are likely to hear a story about resilience. Whether it is “bouncing back” from adversity or “bouncing forward” to a new normal that is enhanced in some way relative to the time before a traumatic event, examples of resilience can be found everywhere, from individuals and households to communities, organizations, and governments. Some researchers have characterized resilience by focusing on the absence of a particular pathology, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, as noted by Almedom and Glandon (2007). Other researchers have explored resilience as a personality trait, or as a quantified adjustment in a group of people after a “potentially traumatic event”. The adjustment would usually be compared to that of another group that experienced the same event exposure but had a different “adjustment” score (Bonanno 2012). It is worth noting that many definitions of resilience, such as those listed above, are closely linked to a specific research methodology. This is convenient froma research perspective but may limit understanding of the particular resilience characteristics of the communities being studied. A broader, more holistic definition of resilience—and the one adopted for this article—is proposed by Almedom and Tumwine (2008): . . . resilience is defined as the capacity of individuals, families, communities, systems, and institutions to anticipate, withstand and/or judiciously engage with catastrophic events and/or experiences; actively making meaning with the goal of maintaining normal function without fundamental loss of identity. This definition emphasizes the need to understand the catastrophic event from the perspective of members of the affected community, especially in terms of people’s experiences relating to meaning and identity. This information is likely to come in the form of a story or narrative that has meaning to the community rather than through a specific analytical or conceptual lens. Following are several examples of community resilience that were verbally relayed to me as part of my work in providing technical assistance for global development projects. These case examples were not investigated within any specific analytical framework. The point here is that they are all conceptually consistent with the definition of resilience offered by Almedom and Tumwine—that is, each describes experiences of a community that actively responded to an adverse event, and essentially maintained normal functioning and, ostensibly, their collective identity. Benin To avoid being captured and sold into slavery by the Fon ethnic group of the Dahomey Kingdom in the 17th century, the Tofinu tribe literally moved their entire village into a lake. According to the guide who poled our pirogue through the village, the Tofinu knew that the Fon belief system prevented them from attacking them in a body of water so they begin building their homes, and eventually stores, schools, clinics, a church, etc., in Lake Nokoué. In other words, their thoughtful reflection on the threat facing them and their