"The word "resilience" gets thrown around a lot. In Central Texas and elsewhere, disaster survivors are praised for their resilience as they mourn after storms and try to rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, marketers use the term to sell everything from face cream to cannabis oil. And fossil fuel companies-major perpetrators of the climate crisis itself-tout their commitment to climate resilience with an apparent lack of irony."
"While the word may be overused to the point of meaninglessness, "resilience" does mean something. Properly understood, it can show us how to prevent disasters and recover from them. Research from various fields-ecology, the social sciences, disaster recovery-shows how people and communities can survive and thrive amid disruption. And disruption is in our future. As humans have destabilized the climate and other natural systems, we can expect more deadly floods, fires, and heat waves."
"Last year alone, Americans endured 27 major weather disasters, which killed 568 people and cost more than $180 billion. "The weather will never be better than this," said Jeremy Hays, managing partner of Upright Consulting Services. "We're going to look back on these crazy wildfire and storm seasons as the good times." In other words, we need to up our resilience game."
The term resilience is widely used and often diluted, but it denotes the capacity to cope with and adapt to change. Proper resilience enables the prevention of disasters and effective recovery, drawing on research across ecology, social sciences, and disaster recovery to support survival and thriving amid disruption. Human-driven destabilization of climate and natural systems increases the frequency and severity of floods, fires, and heat waves. Recent statistics show numerous costly, deadly weather disasters, underscoring that future weather will likely worsen and that resilience efforts must be strengthened and expanded.
Read at Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
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