Category: Resilience

Resilience and Sustainability in Disaster and Non-Disaster Community Development Paths

7/17/2019

Figure 1. Disaster Community and Non-Disaster Community Development Paths. (Based on Lew et al., 2018)

The figure above is one that I developed toward the end of the Taiwan rural resilience research project that is reported on this website. This particular figure is mostly based on the discussion of sustainable and resilient communities by Lew et al., 2018. I have used this figure in several academic presentations on community resilience in the past couple of years, with the most recent being at Ritsumekan Asia Pacific University, in Beppu, Kyushu, Japan (Lew, 2019), but have otherwise not formally published it ... until now.

The figure shows the development paths of two types of communities that we encountered in our research in Taiwan. Three of our communities had experienced major natural disasters (earthquake, flooding or both) in recent memory, while three communities had not experienced a natural disaster within the memory or stories of current residents. The development path model starts with both community types at a base Stage 1 condition. The disaster community experiences a steep decline in functioning conditions, whereas the non-disaster community experiences a gradual decline through the entropy of aging infrastructure, facilities and services. Without intervention, each would reach a degree of degradation in Stage 2, which would be much deeper in the disaster community than the non-disaster community.

Functioning as a self-organizing and self-sustaining system, all communities will respond to their degradation at some point, although some may respond sooner than others. For the disaster community, the dominant response is likely to reflect a high degree of resilience practices. These come for central government recovery funds, as well as self-organizing recovery responses by local residents. The non-disaster community, on the other hand, does not have access to recovery funds and has less motivation for a strong self-organizing response to gradual degradation, and the nature of its responses reflect this.

In general, we refer to the non-disaster responses as "sustainability practices" because they are mostly trying to sustain a status quo while moving through incremental shifts toward community improvement over the long term. Resilience recovery responses tend to be more innovative, with more of an acceptance of large, short term changes to a local economy and culture. This was clearly evident in the community interviews we conducted in Taiwan. The disaster communities were more likely to have undergone a shift in their economies (with tourism being a major new product), that was driven by new ideas generated by both local residents and newcomers who moved to the communities initially to provide disaster relief, and then decided to stay for the long term. The disaster communities were also much more adept at securing government grants for a variety of short and long term projects than were the less organized and less socially cohesive non-disaster communities.

However, even small rural communities can be complex in their social and political relationships. We try to capture this by using the symbol "Rs" to indicate emphasis on resilience practices primarily, but with also some ongoing sustainability practices, as well. The "Sr" symbol is the opposite, with an emphasis on sustainability practices, but with some awareness and utilization of resilience opportunities and initiatives.

In Stage 3, each type of community returns to a stage that is somewhat similar in functions the initial Stage 1. If properly planned and managed, non-disaster communities never really exhibit a Stage 2 decline because maintenance needs are regularly cared for. As such, they maintain their status quo in moving from Stage 1 to Stage 3. In either event, the next question is what will be the development path for the future of each community. There are three options suggested by the model:

A disaster may hit the community causing a rapid and significant decline and forcing them into a resilience development path seeking recovery back to the original stable condition. Resilience theory suggests that communities that have already experienced disasters are better prepared to respond to a new event than those that have not had such an experience in recent memory. As such, the impact would be less and their recovery might be quicker.
For most communities, there will not be a major disaster and they will only have the normal degradation of time to address, which is mostly done through physical and long range community community planning by local governments and individual entrepreneurs. This would be a sustainability development path that maintains the status quo.
The third option is for a community to incorporate the strengths of both resilience practices and sustainability practices to move them to a new level of community well-being and quality of life. For a community to be even better than they were in the past requires them to be both resilient (innovative and change oriented) and sustainable (maintaining sense of place and continuity). This is how we envision a successful sustainable and resilient community to be (see Lew et al., 2018).

Sustainability and resilience are two powerful ways that communities manage their development. Unfortunately, they are often confused and used interchangeably in both common and professional discussions. While some people may disagree with our definitions of the terms here, in the end it does not matter what words we use. It is the intention and resources available to better the communities that we live in that are most important. Change is a constant, but so is identity. How these are managed so both is allowed to flourish is the goal of a sustainable and resilient people and place.

Here are two ways to cite the figure above:

Lew, Alan A. (2019). Time and Space in Tourism and Community Disaster Resilience. Symposium presentation at Ritsumekan Asian Pacific University, 19 June, Beppu, Japan.Online at: http://www.alanlew.com/uploads/2/8/8/4/28845077/apu_-_time_and_space_resilience.pdf
Lew, Alan A. (2019). Resilience and Sustainability in Disaster and Non-Disaster Community Development Paths. Collaborative for Sustainable Tourism and Resilient Communities Blog, 17 July 2019. Online at: http://www.tourismcommunities.com/blog/resilience-and-sustainability-in-disaster-and-non-disaster-community-development-paths

Other References

Lew, A.A.; Ni, Chin-Cheng; Wu, Tsung-Chiung; and Ng, Pin T. (2018). The Sustainable and Resilient Community: A new paradigm for community development. In A.A. Lew & Joseph Cheer, eds., Tourism Resilience and Adaptation to Environmental Change, pp. 30-48. London: Routledge. Online at: http://www.tourismcommunities.com/uploads/2/8/8/4/28845077/lew_ni_wu_ng_2017_s_r_communities.pdf

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The Resilience of Bad Things

3/22/2017

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Resilience has nothing to do with good or bad. Resilience is about the ability of a system to achieve its goals. Goodness and badness are value judgments about those goals. They do not tell us about the resilience of the system.

The words above, or something very close to them, came out of my mouth when I was advising a student about a thesis he is writing related to resilience. There are many examples of social systems that most people would consider "bad", but which appear to demonstrate very strong resilience. This is especially obvious in politics. For example, I would guess that across the globe there are very few people who hold positive sentiments toward the political regime of North Korea. However, that regime has exhibited extraordinary resilience against efforts by many of the most economically and militarily powerful countries in the world to encourage it to change its ways. While less extreme, tensions between the political right and left in many countries shows how each demonstrates a degree of resilience when out of power that is often seen as frustrating to their opposition.

In the context of communities, the resilience of poverty, and related to that malnutrition and homelessness, demonstrates another system that many people would like to end, but which seems to be stubbornly resilient to effective change (Allison & Hobbs, 2004).. It is a self-organizing system, made up of numerous subsytems that benefit from a poverty regime and adapt with great flexibility to changing government policies and sociodemographic conditions.

To me, the presence of highly resilient, yet morally "bad", systems seems so obvious. To understand resilience, one must understand that it applies to both "good" systems and "bad" systems. I would guess that these are structurally the same, and that in many cases what is good to one person or group of people is bad to another. In addition, in many instances the resilience issue is one of how the "bad" system relates to the "good" system. This is seen in the case of left and right wing politics, cited above, but also in the case of natural hazard disasters and community resilience to deal with them. It is even hard to use the words "good" and "bad" here, as they are simply two systems occupying the same space.

Take for example, human settlements and major weather events, which appear to be increasingly in conflict with one another. Natural events (typhoons/hurricanes, as well as earthquakes and tsunamis) only become disasters when people are harmed by them. People are harmed by them when they settle in locations or build structures in ways that largely ignore the potential damage that may ensue. Climate change is the same. In both of these instances, there is a lack of understanding by the human system of the natural system, which then results in a human disaster. One cannot exist without the other.

Similarly, when we try to assess the resilience of a community's tourism system, we are not making judgments about how environmentally sustainable or socially conscious the system may be. Instead the focus should (in my opinion) be on the ability of the system to effectively navigate or manage the adaptive cycle in response to any perturbations that may arise. Environmental conservation and social equity are (again in my opinion) sustainable development issues, not resilience issues. (See: Sustainability Driven and Resilience Driven Societal Development.) And they can also be highly contentious political issues, where people disagree on what is good action and what is bad action -- and we can assess the resilience of each of those positions.

So, why is it that an online search on "the resilience of bad things" shows only articles and links about how to be resilient against bad things, including "when things go wrong", "bad times" and "strength in the face of adversity"? These results were mostly related to psychological resilience, and appeared on both Google and Google Scholar. The only thing that came close to the concepts that I am discussing here were two articles on the resilience of US Southern culture and on US Southern religion. I am not sure what to make of that! When I changed the search to include the word "community", the results were somewhat more nuanced. There was still a strong emphasis on resilience to bad events, but there were also some critiques of the concept of resilience. Most of these suggest that resilience is poorly defined, and government resilience policies tend to support neoliberal and power elite agendas. (See, for example: What Resilience is Not: Uses and Abuses.)

Many of the proponents of the systems theory approach to community resilience have long claimed that it is non-normative (neither good or bad), and is primarily a descriptive science (Brand & Jax, 2007). I believe that this is true from a systems approach, which is what I am arguing here. When we describe the resilience of a system, and how it maintains (or loses) that resilience, then the normative issues of good and bad are mostly irrelevant. Resilience becomes normative when we try to make a system more resilient. In that instance, we immediately bring in values and, as a result, politics. (See, for example: What to Save? The Normative Dilemmas of Resilience.) This is what the critiques of resilience are focused on, which is a perfectly valid argument because so much of the discussion these days is on how to make communities more resilient, especially to climate change. I also admit there there are some value judgments made in selecting variables to assess the resilience of a system, but again, this is not necessarily a characteristic of resilience, but rather of the epistemological biases of the researcher.

The possibility of neoliberal tendencies in the application and practice of resilience is a topic that deserves attention from sociology of science perspective. Beyond that is the large gap in organizational resilience literature on the resilience of bad (or undesirable) systems, as well as the relationship of bad systems to good systems, however those adjectives might be defined. I think these same issues may apply to psychological resilience (Berkes & Ross, 2013). Most things in life are a balance between preferred and non-preferred options, which can be conceptualized from a variety of ways, including a resilience systems approach.

This story also shows the value of graduate students. Whether purposefully or not, they can force us to think more clearly about the conceptual frameworks and assumptions that we take toward our research. And I am sure that I am not the first person to express the ideas in this blog. However, it is clearly not a very common perspective, and I would suggest is a largely unseen phenomenon. Perhaps putting this out in my own words will help to move this important discussion further along. Comments are, of course, welcome. :)

Alan A. Lew
Dept of Geography, Planning & Recreation
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

References

Allison, H.E. and Hobbs, R.J. (2004). Resilience, adaptive capacity, and the “Lock-in Trap” of the Western Australian agricultural region. Ecology and Society, 9(1):3. <https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/article.php/641>

Berkes, F. and Ross, H. (2013). Community Resilience:Toward an Integrated Approach, Society & Natural Resources, 26:1, 5-20, DOI:10.1080/08941920.2012.736605

Brand, F.S. and Jax, K. (2007). Focusing the meaning(s) of resilience: resilience as a descriptive concept and a boundary object. Ecology and Society, 12(1), 23. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art23

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Modeling the Resilience Adaptive Cycle

1/21/2017

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NOTE

If you cannot see the images below (which is a problem in some countries), click here to download a PDF document of this blog page.
You may freely use these images for academic and educational purposes, and if you fully cite this blog post as the source. This blog post may be cited as:
Lew, A.A. (2017). Modeling the Resilience Adaptive Cycle. Collaborative for Sustainable Tourism and Resilient Communities Blog (21 January). Retrieved from http://www.tourismcommunities.com/blog/modeling-the-resilience-adaptive-cycle.
If you have any questions about these, feel free to send me an email using the comment box, below. - Alan Lew

Creative Commons Copyright CC BY-SA 4.0. Updated 11 February 2017.

The Adaptive Cycle

The Adaptive Cycle was one of the early resilience theory concepts that captured the imagination of may researchers. Holling (2001) introduced the Adaptive Cycle as part of his systems approach to resilience theory using a 3-dimensional diagram, with the cycle moving in a roller coaster pattern among the three key variables of resilience, potential, and connectedness (see below). I think that this was probably too complex for many people to conceptualize, and so he simplified it into a two-dimensional diagram that showed the cycle as a figure 8 (or folded infinity loop) pattern, and which should be well known to most anyone interested in resilience theory and thinking.

While visually compelling, the figure 8 pattern is still unnecessarily complicated and makes implications that need to be explained away in one way or another. I personally prefer the more simple circle diagram what was introduced by Walker and Salt (2006). I have reconfigured their diagram below, which has the advantage of showing more clearly the Fore Loop (moving from (re)organization to exploitation to consolidation) and Back Loop (moving from consolidation to collapse and again back to (re)organization). This version, below, first appeared in Lew, 2016.

Tourism researchers have often pointed out similarities to between the Holling's Adaptive Cycle and Butler's Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model. Here I attempt to show the comparison in a diagram (based on Butler, 1980 and Holling, 2001).

In addition to being posted here, with a creative commons copyright, this diagram will appear in: Bakti, L.A., Lew, A.A., and Kim, Y-S. (2017). A Resilient Approach to Collaborative Coral Reef Conservation on Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. In A.A. Lew & J. Cheer, eds., Understanding Tourism Resilience: Adapting to Environmental Change, pp. (forthcoming). London: Routledge.

In the same book chapter cited above, I try to summarize how the different phases of the Adaptive Cycle relate to the variables of Resilience, Potential and Connectedness, which were part of the 3-dimensional diagram that Holling introduced in 2001. I found the best definitions of these three variables (shown below) in Allison and Hobbs (2004).

One of the issues that different diagrams of the Adaptive Cycle share is the misinterpretation that all systems must go through all stages of the cycle. It needs to be continually reinforced that this is not the case. Returning to the General Adaptive Cycle model diagram above, I try to show optional adaptive paths that systems could experience. These figures have not yet been designated for use in any of my articles, other than this blog post.

The first figure below shows all the likely paths that human social systems can take over time as they adapt to changing conditions. They may experience all four stages of the adaptive cycle, or they may only experience two or three of the stages. The major types that result are shown in three successive figures.

The Large and Small Cycles figure illustrates how some systems and processes move slowly through the four stages, possibly encompassing large amounts of resources and influences. These large and slow cycles are also sometime associated with slow, controlling variables. Other systems may move very quickly through the adaptive cycle stages, to the point where they may be largely imperceptible.

The Growth and Collapse Cycles figure shows how some stages may be completely avoided. A growth cycle occurs when the system anticipates vulnerabilities that may lead to collapse and plans for them by moving directly from the consolidation phase to the reorganization phase. If successful, this results in continual adaptation to changing conditions, as suggested by the ‘evolutionary resilience’ concept (Davoudi 2012). The collapse cycle is just the opposite. It is like the ‘poverty trap’ described by Allison and Hobbs (2004), in which a system is unable to effectively escape a constant state of decline. Efforts to reorganize are quickly coopted into rigid consolidation structures that collapse before a growth stage can ensue.

The final theoretical form that modeling the adaptive cycle in this way results in is a reorganizational cycle. Here the system never reaches a stage of consolidation, but is instead is continually reorganizing itself. While it does experience growth, it is not able to enjoy the fruits (or consolidate the benefits) of that growth, but immediately turns a reflexive eye toward restructuring itself. This might be an extreme version of evolutionary resilience, and while I do not have a good example, it seemed theoretically possible.

This final set of two figures are not yet designated for publication in any articles that I have been associated with, other than this blog post. The figures show how different systems (each represented by an adaptive cycle infinity diagram) influence each other through “memory” (aka “remembering” or “path dependence”) and through “revolt” (aka “path divergence” or “path creation”). These are the only two ways that systems influence one another in resilience theory. The figures show nested systems (smaller subsystems that operate within a larger system) and parallel systems. I also place these within the framework of my Scale, Change and Resilience (SCR) model (Lew, 2014), although I am not sure if that is more confusing than helpful. :)

References Cited

Allison, H.E. and Hobbs, R.J. (2004). Resilience, adaptive capacity, and the “Lock-in Trap” of the Western Australian agricultural region. Ecology and Society 9(1): 3. Online at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art3

Butler, R. (1980). The Concept of a Tourist Area Cycle of Evolution: Implications for Management of Resources. Canadian Geographer, 24(1), 5-12.

Davoudi, S. (2012). Resilience: A bridging concept of a dead end? Planning Theory and Practice, 13(2): 299–333, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2012.677124

Holling, C. S. (2001). Understand the in Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems. Ecosystem, 4, 390-405.

Lew, A.A. 2013/2014. Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning. Tourism Geographies 16(1): 14-22. DOI:10.1080/14616688.2013.864325

Lew, A.A., Ng, P.T., Wu, T-C, and Ni, C-C. (2016). Some New Resilience Figures and Diagrams. Collaborative for Sustainable Tourism and Resilient Communities Blog (30 September). Retrieved from http://www.tourismcommunities.com/blog/some-new-resilience-figures-and-diagrams.

Walker, B.H. and Salt, D. (2006). Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington: Island Press.

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Some New Resilience Figures and Diagrams

9/30/2016

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Below are figures and tables that my collaborators and I have developed based on our sustainability and resilience research in Taiwan. Please note:

If you cannot see the images below (which is a problem for people in some countries), click here to download a PDF document of this blog page.
You may freely use these images for academic and educational purposes, and if you fully cite this blog post as the source. This blog post may be cited as:
Lew, A.A., Ng, P.T., Wu, T-C, and Ni, C-C. (2016). Some New Resilience Figures and Diagrams. Collaborative for Sustainable Tourism and Resilient Communities Blog (30 September). Retrieved from http://www.tourismcommunities.com/blog/some-new-resilience-figures-and-diagrams.
The references cited below will be updates as they appear in print in 2017 (or later).
The figures should be self-explanatory, but if you have any questions about these, feel free to send me an email using the comment box, below. - Alan Lew

Creative Commons Copyright CC BY-SA 4.0. Originally posted 30 September 2016; Updated 11 February 2017

(1) The first three figures (with an accompanying table of descriptions) will also appear in:

Lew, A.A.; Wu, Tsung-chiung; Ni, Chin-cheng; and Ng, Pin T. 2017. Community Tourism Resilience: Some applications of the Scale, Change and Resilience (SCR) Model. In Richard Butler, ed., Tourism and Resilience, pp. (forthcoming). Oxfordshire: CABI.

(2) This second set of four figures and two tables will also appear in:

Lew, A.A. 2017. Planning for Slow Resilience in a Tourism Community Context. In Joseph Cheer and A.A. Lew, eds., Understanding Tourism Resilience: Adapting to Social, Political and Economic Change, pp. (forthcoming). London: Routledge.

(3) This third set of two figures will also appear in:

Lew, A.A.; Ni, Chin-cheng; Wu, Tsung-chiung; and Ng, Pin T. 2017. The Sustainable and Resilient Community: A new paradigm for community development. In A.A. Lew & Joseph Cheer, eds., Understanding Tourism Resilience: Adapting to Environmental Change, pp. (forthcoming). London: Routledge.

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Sustainability Driven and Resilience Driven Societal Development

6/27/2016

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a post by Alan A. Lew

This post is based on conversations that I recently had with at a workshop on sustainability and resilience in rural communities, held in Taipei, Taiwan. I am not sure if I believe what I wrote or not, but I am putting out for thought and discussion.

Some propositions:

A system is a mostly independent, learning and self-organizing entity. A human social system is a collection of individuals working together toward some goal(s). For the purposes of this discussion, resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to behave in a way that maintains a sense coherence through changing conditions, while sustainability is defined as a system's behavior that can be considered environmentally, socially and economically ethical.
- I think my definition of resilience is fairly standard, although the activities that I believe could fall under this definition (below) might differ from what some resilience theorists say. Sustainability's definition is more complicated. I build upon the thinking of many resilience authors who consider sustainability as a normative practice, with resilience being a non-normative descriptive characteristic of a system. I extend the idea of "normative" (a "common ideal") to mean a "morally ethical goal" because that is how I read most of the recent UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. I realize that there are other definitions of sustainability.

A RESILIENCE-DRIVEN APPROACH TO SOCIAL SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
All systems have some degree of resilience, which is exhibited in their self-organizing effort to survive (system survivability). This might also be considered as their resistance to extinction. Examples of (mostly) extinct societies from the past are evidence that not all social systems are resilient over the long term. ("Long" is, of course, a relative measurement, as is, to a degree, "extinct".) Some form of social organization appears to be a natural state for all social systems, although what that form of organization is can vary considerably.
Sustainability, on the other hand, is not a natural state of behavior, because most of the time it needs to be imposed by government policies. Instead, it is a normative (ethical) goal that many social systems seek to achieve. (While some argue that there is a normative element in resilience, many more authors suggest that normativity is one, if not the main, difference between sustainability and resilience.) Whether sustainability is natural or not, and whether all social systems seek it or not, are questions that are open to debate. However, assuming sustainability is not intrinsic to human social systems, then it is also true that not all social systems are sustainable. (This might depend on one's definition of sustainability, but by most definitions it is fairly safe to say that many societies are not currently environmentally sustainable.)
Based on propositions 1, 2 and 3, we can define sustainability as the effort to make a resilient system more normative. Normative here is defined as environmentally ethical, socially ethical and economically ethical. The goal then becomes to create system resilient first, and then make it sustainable (ethical).
Examples of this would be strongly centralized and bureaucratically complex organizations, including countries and most large business enterprises. Their resilience is based on the power that the social system gives to their central leadership, and the diminished voice that it it gives to average members in shaping policies that direct the system overall.
The above scenario is a Resilience Driven Approach to Social System Development. Resilience is the base line upon which all other other actions, including sustainability, are then undertaken. I believe that this is how most social systems around the world function. This, for example, has been the argument made by developing countries (such as China and India) to allow them to have higher rates of greenhouse gas emissions than more developed countries (like the US and Europe) in global climate change discussions, which will strengthen their resilience first, after which they can focus more on sustainability.

A SUSTAINABILITY-DRIVEN APPROACH TO SOCIAL SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
An alternative approach could be to make sustainability (ethics) the primary goal of the system, with resilience a secondary goal. The system could self-organize (a resilience action) around sustainability (ethical) objectives.
This might also be a smart resilience move, as sustainability arguments often claim greater long-term system survivability (such as the conservation of natural resources). There is also evidence from the past suggesting that non-resilient societies (those that became extinct) were also environmentally unsustainable.
Economic sustainability is important for the overall quality of life of a social system, but is less clearly tied to the complete collapse of a social system (resilience). The demise of communism as practiced in the Soviet Union and Maoist China might be examples of economic system collapses. In both cases, however, the systems were able to reorganize and continue in a modified form.
Social sustainability (social ethics) is certainly a laudable goal, but may be the least crucial in terms of the complete collapse of a social system. On the other hand, social sustainability, depending on how it is defined, can be a major factor in building system resilience responses to fast and slow variables that put pressure on a system to change.
As opposed to highly centralized and complex systems, participatory social systems might be an example of a sustainability approach to societal development. The social system is made socially ethical by allowing members to have some kind of voice in the selection of their leaders and in the adoption of policies that define system relationships and behavior. The system’s resilience is primarily based on the greater perceived legitimacy of the selected leaders and policies.

CONCLUSIONS
Based on these propositions and examples, a system’s resilience is lower in the short run under a sustainability driven approach, and higher in the short run in a resilience driven approach where fewer ethical considerations need to be made. Socially sustainable participatory social systems are more susceptible to short term influences (public opinion shifts), making them potentially less resilient if legitimacy issues arise. This might be seen in the recent vote by UK citizens to succeed from the EU. Citizen satisfaction levels, however, may be higher over the long term in sustainability driven systems because members have a greater sense of empowerment than in resilience driven systems.
Spatial scales (both geographic space and social space) and temporal scales need to be considered in this discussion. The spatial scale of the social system can range from a neighborhood organization, to a country, and to the entire planet Earth. Discussions of "short term" and "long term" changes should be clearly defined each time they are used, as they can vary considerably from one person's perspective to the next.
Finally, people tend to want both a resilient social system that is able to maintain a high degree of recognizable self organized structure through a fast and slow changing world, and a sustainable social system that leads to more ethical and harmonious relationships with our environment and other people. To achieve this, I think it is important to be aware of the differences between resilience-driven and sustainability-driven policies and actions, because without proper attention, it is possible to have one without the other. Balancing the two approaches may be the major challenge that human societies face.

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Similarities and Differences between Community Resilience and Sustainability

10/24/2015

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by Alan A. Lew
- The ideas expressed in this blog post were developed through lengthy discussions with my research co-investigators:
   - Prof. Pin T. Ng, Northern Arizona University, USA
   - Prof. Chin-cheng (Nickel) Ni, National Hsinchu University of Education, Taiwan
   - Prof. Tsung-chiung (Emily) Wu, National Donghwa University, Taiwan
- This commentary was originally posted on the Tourism Place blog on 24 October 2015.

I have had a continuing interest in resilience as a conceptual framework for community planning, with particular application to tourism development, since I first became familiar with the resilience literature back in 2012. With my background in urban planning (that is mostly what I teach at NAU), I was especially drawn to how planners were discussing issues of slow and evolutionary resilience. And although I only have one formal publication on resilience (Lew 2013), I do have an ongoing research project in Taiwan exploring the differences and similarities between resilience and sustainability. Some presentations based on preliminary data (subject to change) from that research can be found here.

One of the slides in my recent presentations on the topic of resilience and sustainability contains a list of the similarities and difference between the two concepts. Putting this list together has helped me tremendously, because I find that the academic literature is more confusing than helpful on this. I have come to the conclusion that there are two basic reasons why academics (and others) are confused by the relationship between resilience and sustainability.

The first reason for the confusion is the weak and sloppy conceptualization of sustainability, which can sometimes combine criteria that are resilience in origin with those that are more solidly based in sustainability theory.

There is a tendency by some to define sustainability as including every possible "good" thing under the sun that a community should strive to achieve, from carbon reduction to heritage conservation to gender equity to creating jobs to open government to religious freedom to performing arts, and more. Such a kitchen soup approach is, in my opinion, good comprehensive planning (as I learned in planning school) and might be good community development, but it does not reflect the original concept of sustainable development, as articulated in the 1987 report, Our Common Future, by the UN's World Commission on Environmental and Development (aka the Brundtland Report), which elevated "sustainable development" to worldwide importance.

Our Common Future clearly articulated a strong environmental ethic and a strong conservation approach. This also included the restoration of historical ecological systems. Although there were some proactive elements (such as creating fairness between rich and poor), the emphasis was on protecting and maintaining natural and cultural resources for the future and avoiding change, which is much more narrowly defined than comprehensive planning.

A good example of the kitchen soup approach to sustainability is the Global Sustainable Tourism Council's criteria for sustainable tourism destination development. A good example of sustainability that is more true to the original definition is the European Commission's European Tourism Indicators System for Sustainable Destination Management.

Resilience, on the other hand, has it conceptual origins in ecology and disaster management. It is about adaptation, building capacities to change, learning institutions, and creative and innovative responses to changing circumstances. [new 22nov15] It can also be confused by authors who use a more simplified dictionary definition of resilience. This happens because everything conceivable, from a river to a city and from a sound to an idea, exhibits some degree of resilience. Things exist and they end; and in simplistic terms, measurements of the time between their coming into existence and their eventual ending reflects their resilience. Thus, an researcher could say that because a religion has been in existence for over 2000 years, it is resilient. On the other hand, one could also say it is sustainable, which leads to the second reason for the confusion between sustainability and resilience. [end new]

The second reason for the confusion between resilience and sustainability is that they share some common assumptions, methods and goals. Table 1, below, summarizes what I see as the major similarities between these two frameworks. In essence, they are both seeking to ensure the survivability of human society through greater harmony with the natural world. As such, both resilience and sustainability research has tended to focus on natural ecosystems, on community development, and increasingly on climate change. These common goals and research topics makes it seem like resilience and sustainability are the same thing. They are not (IMHO).

Table 2, below, outlines the many and major differences between resilience and sustainability. The biggest difference is in the basic ontological assumptions about the nature of the world: whether it is normal to be in a state of stability and balance, or in a state of change and even chaos. To be sustainable requires that stability is possible. However, human experience seems to be telling us that we live in a chaotic world that requires resilience.

Table 1. Resilience & Sustainability Similarities

Assumptions: Harmony between Human Society & the Natural Environment is Possible

Research Focus: Community Development; Ecology; Climate Change

Methods: Climate Change Policies & Actions; Education & Learning as an Implementation Tool

Goals: System Survivability (Social & Bio-Diversity); Sense of Place & Belonging (Heritage)

Table 2. Resilience & Sustainability Differences

Sustainability

Assumption: Stability & Balance are the Norm (or are at least possible)

Research Focus: Environmental & Social Impacts of Economic Development; Over use of Resources; Carbon Footprints

Methods: “Wise Use” Resource Management; Avoiding or Preservation Against Change; Recycling & “Greening”; Education for Behavior Change

Goals: Normative Ideals (Culture, Environment & Economic balance; Intergenerational Equity; Fairness)

Criticism: Poorly Defined & Very Political

Resilience

Assumption: Nonlinear & Unpredictable Change & Chaos are the Norm

Research Focus: Natural & Human Disaster Management; Climate Change Impacts; Social Capital & Networks

Methods: Reducing Vulnerability & Increasing Physical & Social Capacity for Change (flexibility & redundancy); Embracing Change; Education for Innovation

Goals: Quantitative Equilibrium; System Models (Evolutionary Complex Adaptive Systems; Path Dependence; Innovation)

Criticism: Does Not Address the Causes of Social and Environmental Change

Creating Resilient & Sustainable Communities

My purpose is not to denigrate sustainability in favor of resilience. While I do not see much value in those approaches that poorly define sustainability, I do believe that it is a major paradigm for our time and has brought good results to the world. However, after almost 30 years, sustainability has its problems and does not seem to be an adequate framework in itself for addressing contemporary world and community challenges.

Instead, I suggest that the new paradigm for community development should be the "Resilient and Sustainable Community" -- a community that demonstrates strength in both sustainability and resilience.

Faced with the modern challenges of climate change and natural disasters, economic and cultural globalization, and numerous other unpredictable changes, communities need to ask themselves two questions:

(1) What do we want to protect and conserve, and to keep from changing? (sustainability)

(2) What do we want to adapt and change into something new and maybe better? (resilience)

Table 3 shows the basic indicators that we have been using in our research in rural Taiwan tourism communities. This is another slide that I have been using recently to more clearly explain the conceptual differences between sustainability and resilience. It is based on the two questions, (1) and (2), listed above. For each area there is an indicator that reflects sustainability (conservation, restoration and change avoidance) and one that reflects resilience (adaptation and innovation). Neither is inherently better than the other - they are just different policy choices.

In general, the better a community is able conserve (or sometimes recover) that which they cherish, the more successful they are at sustainability. Similarly, the better a community is able to adapt and change in areas that they want to see development, the better they are at resilience. On the other hand, the inability to protect a community resource against change, or being forced by external forces to change something in directions deemed undesirable by a community, reflects disempowered states of sustainability and of resilience, respectively.

Table 3. Resilience & Sustainability Indicators

1. Local Government Budgeting
     • Building Community Capacity for Change (Resilience)  •
     • Conserving Community Resources (Sustainability)  •

2. Environmental Knowledge
     • New Environmental Knowledge (Resilience)  •
     • Traditional Environmental Uses (Sustainability)  •

3. Community Well Being
     • Improve Living Conditions & Employment (Resilience)  •
     • Cultural Preservation & Traditions (Sustainability)  •

4. Social Support Systems
     • Social Collaboration (Resilience)  •
     • Social Welfare & Equity (Sustainability)  •

Comments and suggestions on this blog post are welcome.

To see how we a are applying these indicators our research, visit our Taiwan Project website at

http://www.tourismcommunities.com/taiwan-project.html

An academic version of this blog post was published in Tourism Geographies:

Community sustainability and resilience: similarities, differences and indicators. - Research Frontiers - Alan A. Lew, Pin T. Ng, Chin-cheng (Nickel) Ni & Tsung-chiung (Emily) Wu - DOI:10.1080/14616688.2015.1122664

Two worthwhile papers on the evolution and multiple definitions of "resilience" are:

Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey, by D.E. Alexander. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 13, 2707–2716, 2013. http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/13/2707/2013/nhess-13-2707-2013.pdf
Multiple interpretations of resilience in disaster risk management, by Kristen MacAskill and Peter Guthrie. Procedia Economics and Finance 18, 667–674, 2014. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567114009897

Updated 22 November 2015
New text added: It can also be confused by authors who use a more simplified dictionary definition of resilience. This happens because everything conceivable, from a river to a city and from a sound to an idea, exhibits some degree of resilience. Things exist and they end; and in simplistic terms, measurements of the time between their coming into existence and their eventual ending reflects their resilience. Thus, an researcher could say that because a religion has been in existence for over 2000 years, it is resilient. On the other hand, one could also say it is sustainable, which leads to the second reason for the confusion between sustainability and resilience.
Old text removed: While it can also be confused by authors who use a more simplified dictionary definition of resilience, that tends to be less of an issue (so far) in resilience scholarship.

Updated 4 December 2015
Added reference and link to "Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey" and "Multiple interpretations of resilience in disaster risk management"

Updated 3 July 2016
Moved from Tourism Place blog to the Blog of the Collaborative for Sustainable and Resilience Communities

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Resilience and Sustainability in Disaster and Non-Disaster Community Development Paths

The Resilience of Bad Things

Modeling the Resilience Adaptive Cycle

Some New Resilience Figures and Diagrams

Sustainability Driven and Resilience Driven Societal Development

Similarities and Differences between Community Resilience and Sustainability

Table 1. Resilience & Sustainability Similarities

Table 2. Resilience & Sustainability Differences

Creating Resilient & Sustainable Communities

Table 3. Resilience & Sustainability Indicators

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