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Resilience, Adaptation, and Inertia: Lessons from Disaster Recovery in a Time of Climate Change
Abstract
Objectives
To examine and assess sociocultural or socioeconomic inertia as an impediment to effective climate change policy response and practice.
Methods
Two core concepts to climate change policy response, “resilience” and “adaptation,” are seen as critical in disaster recovery strategies and practice. As ideal types, these concepts are coalescing in theory and gaining acceptance in the professional community, but not necessarily in practice. These concepts are explored through a study of disaster recovery efforts following the West Virginia floods of 2016.
Results
Disaster recovery strategies based on ideal forms of resilience and adaptation face significant barriers to adoption and practice. Disjunction between theory and practice constitutes one form of inertia. Other contributing factors include individual and collective behavior that resists change through social justification and insular forms of social capital. Institutional drag, in the form of waning political will and limited administrative capacity, also impedes adoption and use.
Conclusion
Sociocultural and socioeconomic inertia challenge the development of effective policies and practices to address climate change; social science can contribute to our understanding of these sources of constraint.
... Even in countries with mature bureaucratic structures, existing government policy frameworks and practices can be slow to respond to the evolving risks and opportunities associated with climate extremes and human security (Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group 2017; RDA Far North SA 2016). Most of the countries surveyed face ongoing challenges of institutional and policy integration, whereby central government policies frequently lack common or coherent goals and priorities in relation to adaptation generally or security more specifically (Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group 2017; Prabhakar et al. 2012;Speranza 2010;Plein 2019). As a result, the tasks of maintaining and enhancing security are subject to inconsistencies of approach within and between individual constituencies. ...
... This absence can arise from ideological opposition to the climate change agenda. In Australia, for instance, an absence of national bipartisan support for climate change policies has contributed to a systematic absence of strategic coordination for adaptation policy from federal government (Torabi et al. 2017;Prabhakar et al. 2012;Speranza 2010;Tangney and Howes 2016;Plein 2019). Alternatively, poor leadership may be an indirect result of the tensions that manifest between the scientifically rationalist approaches of climate risk management popular among advocates of climate change policies and the prevailing economic rationalism of government decision-makers that would discount future risks in favour of addressing short-to-medium term costs and benefits (Porter et al. 2015). ...
... Damage to private property and public infrastructure, and diminishing capacity to access insurance coverage, can mean that property and infrastructure becomes progressively neglected through successive extreme events ( Across South Asia and the Pacific, national and municipal governments often lack the resources to prepare for and respond to extreme events, and many are heavily dependent on foreign aid as a result (de Leon and Pittock 2016; Christoplos et al. 2017). Governments in developing countries may over-rely on funding and support from non-government aid agencies in the aftermath of extreme events, while neglecting longer term poverty reduction and economic development necessary to enhance climate change resilience (Schipper and Pelling 2006;Plein 2019). A key challenge for municipal resourcing concerns how short-term aid projects and donor initiatives can be embedded or "mainstreamed" into ongoing national strategic plans and goals (Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2015; Arenas 2018; Pacific Community and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat 2019; Lyster 2017). ...
Climate security is a burgeoning focus of the multidisciplinary literatures investigating the impacts from climate change. This research theme has gained prominence due to the realisation that climatic changes will likely compromise human welfare and community stability, with significant implications for governments’ security agendas. The Indo-Pacific region is an important case study for understanding climate security given its ongoing environmental and developmental challenges and the cultural, political and economic tensions existing within and between neighbouring countries. This paper presents a systematic review and synthesis of academic and “grey” literatures that address climate adaptation, disaster management or regional security in the Indo-Pacific. From this review, we identify four key themes that arise prominently in discussion and analysis prepared by academic scholars, governments and non-government organisations alike. The ubiquity of these themes speaks to the interdependent nature of the adaptation, disaster management and security challenges. The literature is in agreement that maintaining and enhancing climate security in the Indo-Pacific will depend on the region’s capacity to strategically coordinate between the activities of governments, industry and communities; the willingness of governments to meaningfully cooperate with communities and each other despite existing tensions; governments’ ability to manage limited resources efficiently; and their capacity to identify and address climate-maladaptive path dependencies. We highlight the most popular prescriptions for addressing these concurrent challenges at the current time. We argue that these prescriptions warrant further research and will likely have broader applicability for addressing climate security challenges in other regions of the world.
... However, policy change is context-and event-dependent, and scholars note that the experience of disaster does not always yield policy change. Indeed, disasters can also yield policy inertia and failure, perhaps as often or more so than major policy change (Birkland 1997(Birkland , 2006Boin et al. 2009;Nohrstedt 2008Nohrstedt , 2011Plein 2019). While few studies have examined local policy responses to extreme weather events, those that do find both that extreme events can lead to policy change, and that community-and event-specific conditions matter. ...
... Crow et al. (2018) find that disasters associated with Colorado floods acted as "windows of opportunity for learning," especially in the context of lower fiscal capacity and high disaster-related damage. And yet, not all catastrophic events lead to policy change, as shown by the policy inertia that characterized response to the 2016 catastrophic flooding in southern West Virginia (Plein 2019). ...
At a global level, climate change is expected to result in more frequent and higher-intensity weather events, with impacts ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic. The potential for disasters to act as “focusing events” for policy change, including adaptation to climate change risk, is well known. Moreover, local action is an important element of climate change adaptation and related risk management efforts. As such, there is a good reason to expect local communities to mobilize in response to disaster events, both with immediate response and recovery-focused activities, as well as longer-term preparedness and adaptation-focused public policy changes. However, scholars also note that the experience of disaster does not always yield policy change; indeed, disasters can also result in policy inertia and failure, perhaps as often or more often than major policy change. This study poses two key research questions. First, we ask to what degree policy change occurs in communities impacted by an extreme weather event. Second, we seek to understand the conditions that lead to adaptation-oriented policy adoption in response to an extreme weather event. Our results suggest two main recipes for future-oriented policy adoption in the wake of an extreme weather event. For both recipes, a high-impact event is a necessary condition for future-oriented policy adoption. In the first recipe for change, policy adoption occurs in Democratic communities with highly focused media attention. The second, less expected recipe for change involves Republican communities that have experienced other uncommon weather events in the recent past. We use a comparative case approach with 15 cases and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis methods. Our approach adds to the existing literature on policy change and local adaptation by selecting a mid-N range of cases where extreme weather events have the potential to act as focusing events, thereby sidestepping selection on the dependent variable. Our approach also takes advantage of a novel method for measuring attention, the latent Dirichlet allocation approach.
... Disasters, therefore, become pivotal events in the lives of citizens, shaping public expectations, evaluations, and attitudes toward government (Darr, Cate, and Moak, 2019). Contributing scholars use disasters as a lens through which to examine policy windows (Plein, 2019;Pope and Leland, 2019), legislative behavior (Yeo and Knox, 2019), and the relationship between citizens and government. Studies in this issue examine public praise and blame for government performance (Darr, Cate, and Moak, 2019;Canales, Pope, and Maestas, 2019), trust in government and public officials (Reinhardt, 2019), information as a public good (Wehde, Pudlo, and Robinson, 2019), and factors mediating partisan polarization (Ross, Rouse, and Mobley, 2019). ...
... "For those who study politics and policy, an essential question is whether the severity of a disaster has the potential to disrupt so that real, substantive policy response might follow" (Plein, 2019). Plein articulates a framework for climate change adaptation built on principles of social justice and equity. ...
Objectives
This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences.
Methods
The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity.
Results
Disaster studies bridge the social sciences theoretically and methodologically. Given the scope of disaster impacts—across social, political, economic, ecological, and infrastructure spheres—and the policy response they garner involving public, private, and civic actors, they offer a lens by which to see society and politics in a way that no other critical events can.
Conclusion
Disaster studies offer important applications of social science theories and concepts that expand the field, broaden our reach as social scientists, and deepen our understanding of fundamental social processes and behaviors in meaningful ways.
... Damage and disorganization in the aftermath of a disaster act as a magnification of the vulnerabilities of the affected territory [8]. Nonetheless, a natural disaster can serve as a catalyst and a window of opportunity for anthropic changes with positive effects on the environment [9][10][11]. ...
This article presents a summary of the results obtained as part of the ANR (French National Research Agency)-RELEV project, which focuses on the long-term recovery and reconstruction of the island of Saint Martin following the passage of Hurricane Irma in 2017. This hurricane was classified as category five on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with an average wind speed of 287 km/h. It caused catastrophic damage along its path and highlighted the significant vulnerability of Caribbean societies to this type of phenomenon. This article focuses on the reconstruction of residential buildings on the French part of the island of Saint Martin. It aims to identify and analyze the factors that have favorably or unfavorably influenced their reconstruction and their structural vulnerability reduction. The research is based mainly on a series of interviews with local actors (construction and insurance companies, architects, territorial services, etc.), an online survey of residents (180 responses), and a field survey involving visits to 104 buildings with interviews of the occupants. The results obtained show that having access to financial resources for the reconstruction of buildings is central. However, different parameters must be considered to understand the disparity of situations and identify the factors that have most favorably contributed to the speed and quality of reconstruction and reduction of vulnerability. Even five years after Irma, a significant number of buildings on the island remain either unrepaired or abandoned. These buildings nevertheless constitute a danger in the case of strong winds (becoming a source of projectiles) and have a negative impact on the reputation and attractiveness of the island. The results reveal that in general, buildings in Saint Martin are slightly more resilient than they were prior to Irma, while presenting a great heterogeneity of situations.
... Sin embargo, como indican Tavares et al., (2020), los movimientos sociales pueden ser eficaces a la hora de concienciar sobre la crisis climática actual, pero no lo son tanto a la hora de impulsar un cambio real en la sociedad para que los individuos se comprometan activamente con las cuestiones relacionadas con el medio ambiente y modifiquen sus hábitos diarios de consumo (pasar del "decir hacer" al "hacer"). De hecho, se ha comprobado que en nuestra sociedad sigue existiendo una inercia social con respecto al clima, probablemente impulsada por los medios de comunicación (Tavares et al., 2020), que limita el desarrollo y la aplicación de medidas eficaces para hacer frente al CC (Plein, 2019). Además de esta inercia, en la sociedad existen una serie de barreras económicas, estructurales y sociales que dificultan que el cambio tenga lugar (Semenza et al., 2008). ...
Resumen: Este estudio se centra en analizar las creencias que tienen profesores de España y Latinoamérica sobre el cambio climático, prestando especial atención a la percepción general que tienen del fenómeno, la concienciación, las preocupaciones y al conocimiento de determinados fundamentos científicos. Para recoger la información, se utilizó un cuestionario de 38 ítems (preguntas y afirmaciones) de respuesta cerrada que respondieron un total de 85 profesores de niveles preuniversitarios durante un curso online de formación docente sobre el cambio climático. Independientemente del lugar de procedencia, España o América Latina, los profesores presentan entre ellos resultados muy similares en los aspectos considerados en el estudio, registrándose diferencias significativas en muy pocos de ellos. Creen que el fenómeno es algo real y provocado por la actividad humana, pero a pesar de reconocer la amenaza para la salud que supone, sostienen que afectará más gravemente a futuras generaciones. Ambos grupos comparten la idea de que la sociedad no está preparada para adoptar medidas de adaptación y mitigación. Además, se ha detectado entre el profesorado varias concepciones alternativas sobre los fundamentos científicos y los conocimientos conceptuales que tienen sobre el problema, que están en concordancia con estudios similares realizados en otros contextos con la población en general. Por último, se discuten algunas implicaciones en la formación docente. Latin American and Spanish teachers' perception of climate change: approaches from a teacher education MOOC Abstract: This study focuses on analyzing the beliefs that Spanish and Latin American teachers have about climate change, paying special attention to their general perception of the phenomenon, awareness, concerns and knowledge about certain scientific concepts. To collect information, a questionnaire of 38 closed-response items (questions and statements) was used, which was answered by a total of 85 pre-university teachers during an online teacher education course on climate change.
... Additionally, the post-disaster period must meet the injunction of rebuilding resilient territories and societies, based on the postulate that this period is a 'window of opportunity for change' [7,8]. Damage and disorganisation in the aftermath of a disaster act as a magnification of the vulnerabilities of the affected territory 1 [9,10]. This can create an opportunity to 'take advantage' of the post-disaster period to rebuild differently [11][12][13][14][15][16]. ...
The 2017 hurricane season in the Caribbean Basin recorded 18 events (storms and hurricanes), including Category 5 hurricane Irma on which this article focuses. The aim of this study is to analyse the ‘window of opportunity’ of the post-Irma reconstruction in Saint Martin. Located 250 km north of Guadeloupe, Saint Martin is a small bi-national island composed of two entities: Sint Maarten in the south (state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) and Saint-Martin in the north (French overseas ‘Collectivité’). Our research focuses on the French region, and reconstructions and formalises various attributes, operations and sectors preceding and following the passage of the cyclone. This research highlights twelve key variables distributed within four interdependent spheres (political-administrative, economic and financial, socio-cultural and land-use planning) of Saint-Martin's vulnerabilities. This is represented and analysed schematically through an ‘influence diagram’ (ID). The research outlines the balancing or reinforcing effects of four major variables of the post-disaster period: state re-engagement, post-disaster price increases, intra-communal solidarity and updating risk prevention plans. It appears that disasters alone cannot be considered as a ‘window of opportunity’ given the weight of pre-existing structures and operating patterns. The case of Saint-Martin illustrates the inertia of a system in the face of a major event, despite strong decisions to implement disaster risk reduction and recovery.
... The recovery process does not automatically start once the immediate needs of the situation have been dealt with (Blackman, Nakanishi and Benson, 2017; Effective communication with the community is essential (Spialek and Houston, 2019;Thaler and Seebauer, 2019;Rollason et al., 2018;Arneson et al., 2017) There is a need to for inclusion of diverse actors during the transition to recovery (Cretney, 2018) The community needs to be willing to engage with the recovery of others involved in the recovery process (Okada et al., 2018) The recovery process needs to be managed horizontally and vertically (Plein, 2019) New actors should be included as they emerge (Sou, 2019) The handover process should be coherent, and managed as different organizations and groups complete their roles and others assume responsibility (Finn, Chandrasekhar and Xiao, 2019) The community and its individual members should be recognised as autonomous and a valuable resource (Chan et al., 2019) The decision-making process should be clear, transparent, accessible, and understandable (McDonnell et al., 2019). ...
This research project explores areas in which resilience practitioners’ (RPs) and emergency responders’ (ERs) can influence on a community during a Natural Hazzard Emergency (NHE), and how this affects a community’s capacity to recover. This is important because a community’s ability to effectively recover from impacts of an NHE has implications for that community’s future resilience, and its ability to adapt to the effects of climate change. In this report the influence of RPs and ERs on a community’s capacity to recover is examined. Twelve mechanisms were identified through which ERs and RPs can affect a community during the response to an NHE. Five successful strategies taken from academic literature, which have helped communities to recover in the aftermath of an NHE which A) contribute to a community’s future resilience to NHEs and B) support communities to adapt to climate change, are analysed and summarised. The characteristics of the mechanisms and successful strategies with the potential to be incorporated into NHE response preparation and planning by ERs and RPs are given. The report, concludes with a summary of the findings and a list of recommendations.
How do disasters affect intergroup peace and conflict? Existing research shows that disasters can have opposing effects on how we perceive others: they can exacerbate existing tension in some cases or serve as catalysts for peace and cooperation in others. Yet we know little about the conditions under which we should expect one or the other. In this study, we estimate the impact of disasters on perceptions of out-groups. We combine a dataset of mass disasters with tens of thousands of individual-level survey responses recorded in Round 6 of the Afrobarometer data between 2014 and 2015. Using a difference-in-differences approach exploiting spatial and temporal proximity to disaster occurrences, we estimate the degree to which disasters affect public opinion toward out-groups. As disaster occurrence is plausibly exogenous to interview dates or respondent locations, our approach allows for an improved test of how the shock from disaster can impact public perceptions. Moreover, we show such impact varies by considering the differences in political salience of out-group identities and short- versus long-term differences in the impact on group dynamics. The implications of our findings for understanding the aftermath of past disasters and effects of future disasters on intergroup peace and conflict are discussed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn worldwide attention to the difficulties inherent in managing disasters. Scholars across disciplines have been forced to consider the impact disasters have on interstate relations, state resilience, patterns of violence and hostility, and the vulnerabilities that condition conflict. This special issue offers new insights to help disentangle the relationship between disasters, conflict, and cooperation, by adhering to a three-pronged theoretical framework. First, all pieces in this issue are underpinned by a unified understanding of disasters as endogenous social phenomena. Second, we acknowledge that disasters occur as processes rather than discrete events. Finally, we explore the possibility that disasters and conflict are co-determined by a common set of factors. The articles herein were chosen not only because they advance academic thought about the disaster–conflict nexus, but also because of their potential to advance the practical impact of this line of research on the global conflict and disaster landscape. We highlight the relevance of this special issue for further work investigating the effects of conflict on disasters and the relationship between the hazards cycle process and patterns of violence and hostility, as well as the implications of adopting this suggested framework for policymaking and data collection.
Exposure to extreme weather — the frequency and severity of which has been linked to the climate crisis — has been posited to yield local climate change mitigation and adaptation policy. Here, we outline lessons from a nascent, but growing, literature focused on local policymaking in the wake of extreme weather events. Recent research shows that exposure often yields local adaptation policy, but mitigation is rare. Moreover, while policy change is conditional on event characteristics and local contextual factors, there is no clear formula for local policy action. We call for a more robust theoretical framework and analysis of key combinations of event characteristics, contextual factors and mechanisms. We also recommend attending to the quality of local policy decisions in the spirit of Dietz’s criteria for environmental decision-making.
Climate change is an increasingly pressing concern because it generates individual and societal vulnerability in many places in the world, and also because it potentially threatens political stability. Aside of sea-level rise, climate change is typically manifested in local temperature and precipitation extremes that generate other hazards. In this study, we investigated whether certain kinds of governance strategies were more common in societies whose food supply had been threatened by such natural hazards—specifically floods, droughts and locust infestations. We coded and analyzed ethnographic data from the Human Relations Area Files on 26 societies regarding dominant political, economic and ideological behaviors of leaders in each society for a specified time period. Leaders in societies experiencing food-destroying disasters used different political economic strategies for maintaining power than did leaders in societies that face fewer disasters or that did not face such disasters. In non-disaster settings, leaders were more likely to have inward-focused cosmological and collectivistic strategies; conversely, when a society had experienced food-destroying disasters, leaders were more likely to have exclusionary tribal/family-based and externally focused strategies. This apparent difficulty in maintaining order and coherence of leadership in disaster settings may apply more to politically complex societies than to polities governed solely at the community level. Alternatively, it could be that exclusionary leaders help set up the conditions for disastrous consequences of hazards for the populace. Exceptions to the pattern of exclusionary political economic strategies in disaster settings indicate that workarounds do exist that allow leaders with corporate governance approaches to stay in power.
Purpose
Business continuity and disaster recovery are directly associated frameworks which guarantee the continued operations of organisations after a disaster has occurred. Thus, researchers have continued to investigate best practices in this area. It is in this vein that the authors of this study seek to draw attention to what pertains in Ghana and what role the government can play to improve the situation. The purpose of this study is to explore some of the disasters which have been suffered by businesses in Ghana as well as the causes, effects and lessons learnt. The study will also look at business continuity and disaster recovery measures that could have been implemented in the examples provided.
Design/methodology/approach
The study follows a literature review approach by reviewing secondary data on both man-made and natural disasters that have affected Ghana in the past decade through the review of literature.
Findings
The comprehensive study of the selected disasters indicated the presence of business continuity and disaster recovery measures in some formal institutions; however, the informal sector appeared to have minimal provision for handling disasters.
Research limitations/implications
The authors were limited to the use of the account from the resources used since this study relied on secondary data.
Practical implications
The study indicates that businesses in Ghana must implement business continuity and disaster recovery plans to protect business operations in the event of a disaster.
Originality/value
The study has not been previously published in any other journal. Secondary data for carrying out the study were obtained from other publications including online media platforms in Ghana.
Beyond other social actors, such as policymakers and scholars, common citizens are also expected to actively engage with climate change, by adopting sustainable actions and supporting environmental policies. However, and despite the actual growing of environment-related social movements, a kind of inertia still prevails in the social climate of our society. The media should play a key role in promoting, among common individuals, the adoption of new and more sustainable practices. However, it is argued that the media seems to be failing to effectively address the climate crisis. As such, this study aims to identify the main weaknesses of climate change media communication to further discuss possible opportunities of communication improvements. For that, 1609 news articles published between 2017 and 2018 in five European countries were analyzed in-depth, through quantitative content analysis. The news’ general characteristics, specifically reported themes, and the specificities of actors’ discourses were taken into account for the analysis. It was verified that the European media tends to report climate change by using distant (e.g., future-focused) and outcome (e.g., threatening messages) framings, based on non-resilient, scientific, and political narratives, whilst overlooking the role of civil society on adapting to climate change. These results demonstrate that instead of promoting society’s climate action, the media may be contributing to a widespread social apathy about the climate and the disengagement of individuals regarding environment-related matters. Evidence-based forms of improving the media’s communication on climate change will be further discussed.
We argue that dramatic social change arising from collective action does not represent the worst-case scenario for group members. Specifically, we introduce the concept of collective inertia: a societal state where group members face a macro system devoid of clearly articulated collective goals and values coupled with dysfunctional social and normative structures. Our analysis emphasizes the dynamic process of social change, involving a shift from one societal state to another. Collective inertia is the one societal state that may have devastating long-term consequences for groups.
Objective
Groups defined by race and ideology are well‐known predictors of interpersonal and political trust, but gender‐based effects are undecided. I investigate whether disaster experience conditions a difference in political trust between women and men.
Methods
Examining the hurricane data set of U.S. public opinion, I analyze intersectionality's influence on disaster‐based political trust with a three‐way interaction between race, class, and gender.
Results
Among disaster survivors, black women trust less than all other race–gender groups, and white men trust the most. The difference between black and white women survivors’ political trust is attenuated by education. Education exacerbates race‐based political trust among observers. Among observers, there is not a gender‐based distinction.
Conclusion
Disasters create new identities based on shared experience, and offer a moment in time that illustrates how trust varies along gender–race–class–disaster dimensions. Knowing how trust differs according to intersectionality allows managers to manage critical events better.
Objective
This article explores how the Millennial Generation identity—the shared values and experiences of young adults (born between 1980 and 1997)—affects political polarization of climate change belief, specifically how it mediates the relationship between party affiliation and educational attainment.
Method
To test this, an interaction between Millennial*Republican*education is estimated, using data from an original national survey administered in 2015.
Results
Millennials are more likely to believe in the evidence of climate change and its anthropogenic causes than older adults of their same party affiliation. Unlike older adults, the most educated Millennials are not the most likely to adhere to political party stance; rather, it is among the least educated Millennials that party sorting is most evident.
Conclusion
The Millennial Generation identity is meaningful for understanding political attitudes. Important distinctions exist between Millennials and older adults in the evaluation of climate change opinion and related policies.
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a "Hothouse Earth" pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System-biosphere, climate, and societies-and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
This article examines the roles that governors play in disaster recovery, a topic that remains underemphasized in both the research and practice-based literature. In order to more fully explore these roles, we interviewed former Governors James B. Hunt, Jr. (D-NC) and Haley Barbour, (R-MS), who were in office following Hurricanes Floyd (1999) and Katrina (2005) respectively—two events that represent the costliest disasters in the history of both states. Interview questions were framed across three dimensions of disaster recovery: The rules governing disaster assistance and the degree to which associated programs and policies address local needs, the timing of disaster assistance, and the level of horizontal and vertical integration across organizations that deliver disaster assistance. Additional questions focused on gubernatorial leadership and planning for recovery. Based on the findings, we posit a number of policy recommendations, next steps, and future areas of study.
How can public engagement assist in the development of just processes and outcomes in adaptation discourse and policymaking? A concern with justice is at the center of thinking about adaptation that is not only resilient, but also public, engaging, and transformative. Theoretically, the intersection of adaptation, transformation, and environmental and climate justice is examined, before exploring the specific concerns and normative foundations for adaptation policy articulated by local governments, environmental groups, and local residents engaged in adaptation planning in Australia. Despite a discursive disconnect between governmental focus on a risk or resilience-based approach and a community concern with the vulnerability of basic needs and capabilities of everyday life, deliberative engagement in adaptation planning can both address issues of justice and represent a transformative practice.
Despite the ubiquity of disaster and the increasing toll in human lives and financial costs, much research and policy remain focused on physical infrastructure–centered approaches to such events. Governmental organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security, United States Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Agency for International Development, and United Kingdom’s Department for International Development continue to spend heavily on hardening levees, raising existing homes, and repairing damaged facilities despite evidence that social, not physical, infrastructure drives resilience. This article highlights the critical role of social capital and networks in disaster survival and recovery and lays out recent literature and evidence on the topic. We look at definitions of social capital, measurement and proxies, types of social capital, and mechanisms and application. The article concludes with concrete policy recommendations for disaster managers, government decision makers, and nongovernmental organizations for increasing resilience to catastrophe through strengthening social infrastructure at the community level.
Transformation as an adaptive response to climate change opens a range of novel policy options. Used to describe responses that produce non-linear changes in systems or their host social and ecological environments, transformation also raises distinct ethical and procedural questions for decision-makers. Expanding adaptation to include transformation foregrounds questions of power and preference that have so far been underdeveloped in adaptation theory and practice. We build on David Harvey’s notion of activity space to derive a framework and research agenda for climate change adaptation seen as a political decision-point and as an opportunity for transformation, incremental adjustment or resistance to change in development pathway. Decision-making is unpacked through the notion of the activity space into seven coevolving sites: the individual, technology, livelihoods, discourse, behaviour, the environment and institutions. The framework is tested against practitioner priorities to define an agenda that can make coherent advances in research and practice on climate change adaptation.
The specific impact of community-based and faith-based groups on disaster response and recovery is a relatively recent complement to existing work on the role of these groups in public circles. It is generally recognized that communities in need may rely upon these groups to some extent when confronted with extraordinary events, but additional case studies of the potential extent of this reliance and sharing of learning between communities are necessary. This paper highlights the experience of the city of Minot, North Dakota, which suffered an immense flood in 2011, and the role of community-based and faith-based groups in supporting the city's successful recovery effort. The question is considered: what were the impacts of nonprofit and faith-based groups on the 2011 Souris (Mouse) River flood response and recovery? The research relies upon primary data from interviews conducted in July 2012, roughly one year after the floodwaters crested in Minot, with local public and faith-based group leaders. Nonprofit and faith-based groups had a particularly impressive impact on response and recovery in Minot.
The policy literature often mentions the agenda-setting influence of focusing events, but few policy studies systematically examine the dynamics of these events. This article closes this gap by examining focusing events, group mobilization and agenda-setting. Using natural disasters and industrial accidents as examples, most focusing events change the dominant issues on the agenda in a policy domain, they can lead to interest group mobilization, and groups often actively seek to expand or contain issues after a focusing event. I explain how differences in the composition of policy communities and the nature of the events themselves influence group and agenda dynamics. The organization of policy communities is an important factor in agenda setting, but agenda setting and group politics vary considerably with the type of event and the nature of the policy community.
The Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) is a mutual aid agreement and partnership that allows states to assist one another in responding to natural and man-made disasters, often in advance of federal disaster assistance. This article examines EMAC’s response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in order to address the significant need for analysis of emergency management at the state level. A content analysis of news reports, government documents, and reports from a number of institutions was performed to determine the volume and direction of EMAC’s performance and its transactions during the response operations. The authors find a lack of EMAC training among responders, potentially reducing communication and coordination and the efficiency and effectiveness of response operations. A network analysis assessed the relationships among the responding organizations to coordinate their emergency response operations.
While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such
adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters.
This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes
to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to
develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of
adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of
risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and
culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics,
risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.
Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities--Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence--that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.
A previous version of "Tweeting Blame in a Federalist System: Attributions for Disaster Response in Social Media Following Hurricane Sandy' presented at the 2018 Southern Political Science Association conference.
Objectives
We examine how prior experience with government agencies shapes citizens’ assessments of government performance. In Louisiana, two extreme weather events, 11 years apart, required intervention from the state and federal government: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2016 floods. Were Louisianans’ attitudes toward government response shaped by their prior experiences during a natural disaster?
Methods
We use an original survey of Louisianans to assess the role of Katrina experience in performance assessments of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Louisiana state government in 2016.
Results
We find a significant negative relationship: flood aid applicants in 2016 rated state government much lower, but only if they also applied for Katrina aid.
Conclusions
Those with personal experience with FEMA hold lower expectations of state government performance, which deteriorated under the Jindal Administration, and look to the federal government for support. Prior experience with government agencies establishes expectations of responsibility that endure years later.
Objective
This article examines various determinants of communication behaviors related to natural hazards and how those determinants vary for those at home or those away from home. We use the context of a series of storms that provoked communication to determine differences across media platforms, location during the event, sending versus receiving communication, and certain demographic characteristics.
Methods
We use a survey of Oklahoma residents fielded in the Spring of 2016 following a series of storms to examine self‐reported communication behaviors.
Results
Our findings suggest that individuals are more likely to communicate when away from home, across all media for both sending and receiving behaviors. We find that warning reception methods differ importantly across location; those at home rely on authority‐to‐citizen communication, while others rely on citizen‐to‐citizen communication. Demographics and socioeconomic status also influence communication patterns.
Conclusion
Concerned individuals and emergency managers should use a diverse set of media to communicate, especially under increased risk or hazard, to reach relevant populations across demographics and place‐based locations. These strategies must be sensitive to time of day and the availability of media platforms to affected residents.
The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly defensive task - protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for. Adaptation to Climate Change argues that, without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience-transition-transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts where adaption is unfolding, from organizations to urban governance and the national polity. This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.
Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida – have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practitioners have looked to recast emergency management, and community resilience has emerged as a way for to better prevent, manage, and recover from these disasters. How is disaster resilience perceived by local government officials and translated into their disaster response and recovery efforts?
Ashley D. Ross systematically explores and measures disaster resilience across the Gulf Coast to gain a better understanding of how resilience in concept is translated into disaster management practices, particularly on the local government level. In doing so, she presents disaster resilience theory to the Gulf Coast using existing data to create county-level baseline indicators of Gulf Coast disaster resilience and an original survey of county emergency managers and elected municipal officials in 60 counties and 120 municipalities across the Gulf States. The findings of the original survey measure the disaster resilience perceptions held by local government officials, which are examined to identify commonalities and differences across the set of cases. Additional analyses compare these perceptions to objective baseline indicators of disaster resilience to assess how perceptions align with resilience realities.
Local Disaster Resilience not only fills a critical gap in the literature by applying existing theories and models to a region that has experienced the worst disasters the United States has faced in the past decade, but it can also be used as a tool to advance our knowledge of disasters in an interdisciplinary manner.
This monograph provides valuable lessons in building disaster resilience for rural communities and beyond. With a focus on Florida, the authors present a comprehensive review of the current debates surrounding the study of resilience, from federal frameworks, state plans and local initiatives. They also review evaluation tools and feature first-hand accounts of county emergency managers as well as non-profit and community groups on key issues, including perspectives on vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children and farm workers.
Readers will find insightful answers to such questions as: How can the concept of resilience be used as a framework to investigate the conditions that lead to stronger, more sustainable communities? What factors account for the variation across jurisdictions and geographic units in the ability to respond to and recover from a disaster? How does the recovery process impact the social, political and economic institutions of the stricken communities? How do communities, especially rural ones, collaborate with multiple stakeholders (local, regional, state, national) during the transition from recovery to resilience? Can the collaborative nature of disaster recovery help build resilient communities?.
The primary audiences of this book are scholars in emergency and crisis management, planning and policy, disaster response and recovery, disaster sociology and environmental management and policy. This book can also be used as a textbook in graduate and advanced undergraduate programs / courses on disaster management, disaster studies, emergency and crisis management, environmental policy and management and public policy and administration.
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The process of long-term recovery, if done well, can minimize post-disaster disruption, address problems that existed before the disaster struck, and improve the future resilience of a community. The U.S. government, however, historically has lacked a systematic approach to supporting community recovery. This study describes the history of federal policies for supporting community recovery after disasters, with particular attention to the roles of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We conclude by considering the new National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF). This historical review suggests that the federal government needs to emphasize the following: providing resources for community recovery planning; facilitating increased flows of information after disasters; streamlining FEMA assistance to public agencies; explicitly working to reduce the barriers between FEMA and HUD; and incorporating equity into recovery policies. Recovery policies also need to include incentives to achieve substantive goals of rebuilding in a way that is sustainable, equitable, cost-effective, and timely, and that reduces the chances of future disasters. Takeaway for practice: Local community planners can draw several lessons from this historical account. First, they should become aware of the various post-disaster programs now, before disaster strikes. Second, knowledge of post-disaster policies and programs will enable planners to use them creatively and effectively if disaster strikes. Third, in the midst of reconstruction, planners need to continually seek opportunities to promote betterment and resilience to natural hazards.
Most theories in social and political psychology stress self-interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Advocates of system justification theory argue that (a) there is a general ideological motive to justify the existing social order, (b) this motive is at least partially responsible for the internalization of inferiority among members of disadvantaged groups, (c) it is observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness and (d) paradoxically, it is sometimes strongest among those who are most harmed by the status quo. This article reviews and integrates 10 years of research on 20 hypotheses derived from a system justification perspective, focusing on the phenomenon of implicit outgroup favoritism among members of disadvantaged groups (including African Americans, the elderly, and gays/lesbians) and its relation to political ideology (especially liberalism-conservatism).
There is considerable research interest on the meaning and measurement of resilience from a variety of research perspectives including those from the hazards/disasters and global change communities. The identification of standards and metrics for measuring disaster resilience is one of the challenges faced by local, state, and federal agencies, especially in the United States. This paper provides a new framework, the disaster resilience of place (DROP) model, designed to improve comparative assessments of disaster resilience at the local or community level. A candidate set of variables for implementing the model are also presented as a first step towards its implementation.
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.
In this innovative account of the way policy issues rise and fall on the national agendaâthe first detailed study of so many issues over an extended periodâFrank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones show that rapid change not only can but does happen in the hidebound institutions of government. Short-term, single-issue analyses of public policy, the authors contend, give a narrow and distorted view of public policy as the result of a cozy arrangement between politicians, interest groups, and the media. Baumgartner and Jones upset these notions by focusing on several issuesâincluding civilian nuclear power, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safetyâover a much longer period of time to reveal patterns of stability alternating with bursts of rapid, unpredictable change. A welcome corrective to conventional political wisdom, Agendas and Instability revises our understanding of the dynamics of agenda-setting and clarifies a subject at the very center of the study of American politics.
Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Struggling
- Brindley David
System Under Stress: The Challenge to 21st Century Governance
- Donald F. Kettl
Cultural Strategies of Agenda Denial
- Roger W. Cobb
- Marc Howard Ross
The Semisovereign People
- E. E. Schattschneider
Philosophy and Disaster
- Zack Naomi
The Transformation that Fell Short: Bush Federalism and Emergency Management
- Derthick Martha
How the Race-Class-Gender Intersection Conditions the Effect of Disasters on Political Trust
- G Y Reinhardt
Baldwin: FEMA Rather than WV Needs to Be the Object of Scrutiny This Week
- Davis Pete
A Decade of System Justification Theory
- Jost John T.
Available at 〈https://governor
- Justice Jim
Built on Resiliency”Charleston Gazette-MailJuly 3
- E Gee
- Gordon
Clendenin Just Beginning to Recover from Historic Flood.”West Virginia Public RadioJune 28
- Marra Ashton
California Winemakers Return to Vineyards Resilient After Wildfires.”NBC NewsOctober 30
- Nbc News
Gov. Puts Rise Program Under National Guard Removing it from Commerce.”Charleston Gazette-MailJune 4
- Zuckerman Jake
Climate Change Affecting WV Whether We Believe it or Not
- Charleston Gazette
‘Thousand-Year’ Downpour Led to Deadly West Virginia Floods.”Climate.gov. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
- Tom Di Liberto
Govenor's Press Conference
- Justice Jim
Year After the Flood Clendenin Recovery Continues.”Charleston Gazette-MailJuly 29
- Kersey Lori
WV Supreme Court Upholds State's Denial of Nicholas Consolidation
- Quinn Ryan
West Virginians’ Resiliency Made Me a West Virginian
- Alex Wiederspiel