In recent years the resilience imperative has made it onto the agenda of local and national governments, business leaders and international institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. In 2010, the UN Office for Disaster and Risk Reduction launched the five-year Making Cities Resilient campaign (UNISDR, 2015).
A 2012 report to the Secretary-General of the UN, prepared by the high-level panel on global sustainability and entitled Resilient People, Resilient Planet — A Future Worth Choosing, recommends three broad strategic actions: i) empowering people to make sustainable choices, ii) working towards a sustainable economy, and iii) strengthening institutional governance (UNGSP, 2012, p.79).
The 2013 World Bank report on Building Resilience recommends that the “international community should lead by example by further promoting approaches that progressively link climate and disaster resilience to broader development paths, and funding them appropriately” (World Bank, 2013: ix). In the UK there are now community resilience officers in local councils and the National Health Service.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Challenge — funded with $100 million — says it “is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century”. The initiative will support 100 cities financially to enable them to employ ‘chief resilience officers’ (CROs). The city of San Francisco hired Patrick Otellini as the world’s first CRO in early 2014 and by December 2014 another 64 cities had received funding to support this important whole-systems integration role in their city councils and town halls.
The Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) — the German government’s foresight unit — published a 400-page report in 2011, entitled World in Transition: A New Social Contract for Sustainability. It reviews historical examples of social change and suggests that individual actors and change agents are important drivers of cultural transformation, hence their role should be taken more seriously.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
