Building resilient communities: where disaster management and facilitating innovation meet

Abstract

Contemporary concerns, such as climate change, the multitude of disasters, enduring violent conflicts, and the implosion of the global financial system are characterized by complexity, uncertainty and contradiction, and lead to rapid and often unpredictable change. Despite the global nature of most of such concerns, it is local communities that will have to adjust their practices in order to cope with the often adverse effects of such events. This chapter identifies some of the lessons learned in fields such as disaster management and facilitating innovation, which could be relevant in other areas, particularly for reflexive practitioners working with vulnerable communities to enhance their resilience. Such a cross-boundary approach can provide valuable insights into the key aspects of what dealing with 'post-normal times' entails at the community level. We argue that resilient communities can be engendered by unleashing and strengthening their adaptive potential, through creating awareness of and space for emergent behaviour and, by laying an enabling foundation for competent collective behaviour.