Transforming resilience-building today for sustainable futures tomorrow

Deubelli, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7765-0552 & Venkateswaran, K. (2021). Transforming resilience-building today for sustainable futures tomorrow. IIASA Working Paper. Laxenburg, Austria: WP-21-005

Preview

Text WP-21-005.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (563kB) | Preview

Abstract

Addressing increasingly profound vulnerabilities and risks requires a step change away from piecemeal fixes often focused around preparedness and post-disaster recovery towards transformational interventions and measures that focus on creating systemic shifts that challenge underlying vulnerabilities and governance gaps from the design phase itself.
IIASA and ISET in the project “Transformation and Resilience” conducted with the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and other initiatives respond to the evident need to reform climate and disaster risk management towards transformational approaches. In this working paper, we reviewed efforts to respond to this evident need, drawing on key findings from the forthcoming book “Transformation and Disaster Resilience” (Springer, forthcoming) to provide a practical stock-take of what transformational risk management (adaptation) is, deep dive into examples of transformational interventions and uncover barriers and enablers for getting transformational resilience-building underway in diverse contexts.
We found that while there are diverse entry points for transformational resilience-building, they share a combination of (some of) the following interlinked pathways: i) Operationalizing innovative approaches and solutions; ii) Delivering integrated intervention packages; iii) Establishing participatory governance models; and iv) Scaling successful pilots, along with a strong commitment to delivering on achieving transformation by setting it as their goal from the start, consequently designing their resilience-building measures and interventions with transformation as their guiding star.
We also found that whether interventions and measures designed for transformational change will deliver on their objective strongly hinges on creating appropriate enabling environments, which include i) learning and knowledge platforms and experiential niche learning and continuous feedback loops; ii) aligning transformational change objectives with strategic government priorities to harness and foster political will and moment; as well as iii) unlocking the transformational potential of bottom-up governance grounded in local contexts; together with iv) establishing the necessary framework conditions for phased, long-term programs; and v) committing sufficient financial outlays to initiatives designed with transformational change in mind.

Actions (login required)

View Item