This is part 2 of an adaptation of Laurie Mazur’s essay for the new WorldWatch ‘State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?‘ report.
Read part 1 here.
From the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to Superstorm Sandy, the last decade has seen an incredible array of natural disasters. Of course, disasters of all kinds are nothing new, but, thanks to the growing scale and interconnectedness of the human enterprise – and the damage we have done to the natural world – the frequency, scale, and consequences of today’s calamities are truly without precedent.
The proliferation of disasters is raising awareness about our collective need to minimize vulnerability and to bounce back afterwards – our need for greater resilience. In the first post in this series, we explored the characteristics of resilient social and ecological systems. Here, we look at how that thinking can be applied and at how resilience is gained and lost.