Can a society be resilient

Abstract

The nature of society is examined to see how or if society could provide a basis for dealing with global threats, such as climate-driven hazards, regional threats such as water scarcity, and local threats such as flooding. Typically, local threats are acting at the community rather than the societal level. Drawing on different perspectives of society and community, the potential for a resilient response, by each, is explored. It is concluded that, in respect of global threats, the active agent for change (resilience) is the government in each country, under the nominal leadership of a global institution, the United Nations (acting under the remit of the UN Framework for Climate Change). In respect of regional threats, this should be less complicated as it involves fewer countries, though historical legacies make the required collaboration quite fragile. It is clear how a community could respond collectively with a clear basis for resilience faced, as it would be, with some clearly-defined and localized physical hazard, such as flooding. Societal resilience is, in effect, the sum of its communities’ resilience, and in general, proportional to the nature of the State and the level of trust that it embodies. In the absence, to date, of any evidence of any government being able to implement a climate-resilience policy at societal level, efforts need to continue to be put at community level, of which there are already many examples around the world. This would allow climate-resilient communities to continue to emerge. At some stage, as resilience evolves nationally, society as a whole may then be incorporated.