3 minute read
ENVIRONMENT
Development must build resilience COLLECTIVE INNOVATION
The impacts of climate change place vulnerable communities at risk and could undermine community resilience to contextual stressors. Economic development needs to embrace strategies that strengthen this resilience rather than inadvertently eroding it.
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BY SRK CONSULTING
Lisl Pullinger and Insiya Salam, consultants at SRK, highlighted the impact of the “triple crisis” on communities’ capacity and capability to deal with external shocks and stresses in a recent SRK workshop on climate change. “Even where people manage to escape poverty, progress is often temporary,” Pullinger shared. “Economic shocks, conflict, food insecurity and climate change can push them back into poverty.”
She noted that communities and ecosystems were having to adapt to climate change, but it was too soon to say whether this would happen quickly enough or whether the global community would be able to slow down the progress of climate change within manageable limits. At the same time, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and water insecurity disproportionally affect people who are already vulnerable due to poverty or conflict.
“It is vital that we recognise the interaction of these factors,” she said. “Focusing on climate challenges, but not considering the socio-economic or political context of the communities whose lives and livelihoods depend on the local environment, will fail to deliver positive outcomes.”
Salam explained how the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework is used to understand people’s or communities’ access to and control over different types of livelihood assets – such as natural, human, financial, social and physical capital. “This framework helps to develop an understanding of the ‘vulnerability context’ – from there we can analyse how people operate within an environment shaped by shocks, trends and seasonality.”
An external shock can be either physical or economic and is generally an unexpected event that can directly destroy assets or affect the people, households or communities themselves. Natural shocks include extreme weather events, floods or pandemics like Covid-19.
In a similar way, a mining or industrial project can also result in social and/or environmental impacts, either because of land use challenges and/ or the in-migration of people from other areas in search of employment.
Vulnerability can be understood as a series of “layers”, Salam clarified, with a core of systemic vulnerability based on political, historical and cultural factors. Climate-related vulnerability due to events like repeated cyclones can add another layer, as can political-social vulnerability caused by armed conflict, for example. In this context, an added layer such as impacts from mining – resulting, for instance, from resettlement and economic displacement – can therefore be devastating.
A livelihood can be classified as sustainable if it is resilient in the face of these shocks and stresses. It also needs to be independent from external support, and able to maintain the long-term productivity of natural resources. A final qualification of a sustainable livelihood is that it does not undermine the livelihood options of others.
Sustainable development, generally, as well as specific mining and industrial projects, therefore need to adopt a multi-partner approach that brings together all the important role players to help build community resilience. This includes the community itself, traditional leadership systems, local private companies, and government at local, regional and national level, as well as the international community.
“Building resilience needs to include strategies like increased access to and control over community capital assets,” said Pullinger. “It should also focus on disseminating and strengthening community knowledge systems, as well as strengthening community infrastructure.”
Successful adaptation strategies – the longer-term responses by households to adverse events, cycles and trends – make them less prone to crisis over time and improve their capacity to resist shocks. An integrated approach to the triple crisis that combines community-based adaptation and ecosystems-based approaches to adaptation is required.
“These two approaches evolved separately, largely from developmental and environmental groups respectively, but both aim to increase the ability of vulnerable people to adapt to climate change and build climate resilience,” concluded Salam.
