Resettlement in Place: A New Model for COVID19 Recovery

This national crisis calls for a new model for economic disaster recovery. We propose a new strategy ‘resettlement in place’ – it is based on best practices in refugee resettlement and social intelligence, a model to harness local data and lessons learned from previous disasters, including Chicago’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

Building Resilience to Natural Disasters in Populated African Mountain Ecosystems

As part of CAWR’s Stabilisation Agriculture Programme, I recently visited Chimanimani district in Zimbabwe to initiate comparative research on how conventional and agroecologically managed landscapes coped with the impacts of Cyclone Idai in March 2019. Idai deposited the total annual rainfall in the first twelve hours alone – yet sat over and devastated Chimanimani for three days.

The Response Podcast Episode 5: Inequality, Structural Racism, and the Fight for Justice after the Grenfell Tower Fire

In this episode of The Response, we examine the events that led up to the Grenfell Tower fire and learn how the community has responded through the voices of survivors, their families, and others who were impacted.

Paradise Lost

Super Typhoon Yutu made history as the worst storm to hit United States soil since 1935. The Category 5 storm, with sustained winds of 180 mph, wreaked havoc on the islands of Saipan and Tinian, which are part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The storm left thousands of residents without homes.

Remarkable Communities that Create Systems Change after Disaster

Maybe the best thing we can do in the wake of a disaster is to cultivate closely knit, organized, and empowered communities that are more resilient during catastrophes and better able to demand the resources they need to not only survive those acute disasters, but to rebuild on a more just and sustainable basis.

Navigating Hope Through Crisis – Disaster and a Politics of Possibility

We can, and should, theorise the broader politics of disaster. However, everyday stories of post-disaster action and resistance shed light on the small-scale, experimental grassroots interventions that bring forward hope in the midst of crisis.

This Hurricane Season, Puerto Ricans Are Imagining a Sustainable Future

A just recovery for Puerto Rico not only means rebuilding what Maria destroyed, but reclaiming the political and economic agency stifled by American colonialism.

Learning Resiliency from Disaster

Now the Wine Country fires are out and Richard is available to come back on Locus Focus for this episode, but instead of talking about the original topic we’re going to look at how all the disasters we’ve witnessed this year are highlighting critical lessons about what it means not only to build a sustainable future but one that is resilient as well.

Warning to Local Governments: Adopt Climate Adaptation Strategies or Face Credit Downgrades

The growing effects of climate change, including climbing global temperatures and rising sea levels, are forecast to have an increasing economic impact on state and local governments in the United States. “This will be a growing negative credit factor for issuers without sufficient adaptation and mitigation strategies,” Moody’s noted in a statement released in conjunction with the report.