DIRTY CANALS. SCORCHING SUN. NO ESCAPE. FAILING SHELTER CONDITIONS IN PAKISTAN LEAVE CITIZENS WITH FEW OPTIONS FOR RELIEF Food, shelter, and clothing have been the traditional holy trinity when talking about the basic needs of any population. It is, therefore, conceivable that when one of these elements is inadequate, the conditions faced by people are less than acceptable. Above: The map above shows all of the research site locations. In Pakistan, through the Sheltering From A Gathering Storm project, we had an opportunity to explore four communities for which the shelter component failed to provide them protection from increasing summer temperatures, combined with an inadequate supply of e
On Wednesday 11 June 2014, almost 40 UCR-CoP participants gathered for our mid-year event to hear about and discuss some of the interesting projects and research findings our members have been working on this year. The event hosted at Winrock International, Hanoi, provided an opportunity for members from government, private, research and the not-for profit sectors to hear three interesting presentations relating to the following themes: Mainstreaming urban climate resilience into policy and decision-making Capacity building and training Sharing knowledge and lessons learned Dr. Nguyen Phuong Nam, from Clitech, shared with the group the findings of a review of Climate Action Planning (CAP) by
ISET-International’s June 2014 newsletter provides key updates on research in Vietnam under the project Sheltering From a Gathering Storm. To view the full text with links case studies and exciting new videos, please click here.
When I called my mother to complain about my flooded basement after the September 2013 floods in Boulder, Colorado, her response was, “Kanmani, this would have been a lot worse had it happened in India.” To a large degree, this is true. After all, Indian cities do have a larger population density and lower economic and resource capacity than Boulder. But are resource and economic capacity alone the primary determinants of resilience? Gorakhpur, a city in eastern India, and Boulder are both prone to climate hazards, particularly floods. In both cities, major flooding events and projections that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme rainfall events led various organizations an
As Dr. Marcus Moench, of ISET-International, urges the audience at the Resilience Futures conference in Fortaleza, Brazil to consider regulatory and incentive frameworks that build-off of autonomous adaptation already occurring in local communities around the world, an attendee from India replied by saying that he didn’t “believe local scale adaptation will be a solution to climate change.” Is the traditional planning regime our only answer? Systematic planning changes can take up to 5 to 10 years to influence policy shifts or institutional rearrangements. With increased extreme events and rapid urbanization, are we seeing these impacts too late or at all? If 4 degrees is where we are headed
(Above: Pope Francis, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Francis_Korea_Haemi_Castle_19.jpg) Getting people to not only think about resilience but also advocate for transformative change is extremely difficult. Whether it be long term planning or rapid disaster recovery efforts, resilience thinking is often times a subsidiary notion. Victims of Hurricane Sandy and last year’s tornado in Moore, Oklahoma prioritized a fast-track rebuilding effort over a longer, more strategic recovery. And who can blame them? When communities are flipped upside down, the first thought for most is to rebuild as fast a possible. Families need to get back into their homes and businesses need to r
What is Resilience: A) a buzzword B) a concept of profound importance C) a term of common speech D) a word of multiple meanings in different contexts E) All of the above The answer is, of course, all of the above. In 2012, resilience was highlighted as the buzzword of the year by Time Magazine.[1] Its use has proliferated in everything from national and development policy debates to discussions of personal and community identity. At the same time, the concept of resilience has been actively explored by scientific and academic communities as an attribute of the complex ecological, social, behavioral and psychological systems of which all humans are a part. Understanding the factors that c
