TY - JOUR

T1 - Social dynamics of community resilience building in the face of climate change

T2 - the case of three Scottish communities

AU - Fazey, Ioan

AU - Carmen, Esther

AU - Ross, Helen

AU - Rao-Williams, Jennifer

AU - Hodgson, Anthony

AU - Searle, Beverley A.

AU - AlWaer, Husam

AU - Kenter, Jasper O.

AU - Knox, Katharine

AU - Butler, James R. A.

AU - Murray, Kris A.

AU - Smith, Fiona M.

AU - Stringer, Lindsay C.

AU - Thankappan, Samarthia

N1 - We express thanks to the many different and often inspiring participants involved in the SBCRC project who made this work possible. The project was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Climate Justice programme. We thank two generous reviewers who helped improve this manuscript.

PY - 2021/9/1

Y1 - 2021/9/1

N2 - Meeting global targets that maintain temperatures at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels while adapting to the growing impacts of climate change requires significant and rapid societal change. Within this context, there has been growing interest in building community resilience to shocks and stressors and as a forward-looking process. Yet while there has been extensive attention to conceptual aspects, there has been much less on how this can be achieved in practice. This research worked with three communities in Scotland (UK) regularly exposed to flooding and other integrated challenges to learn from action about community resilience building. A carefully developed four-tiered transdisciplinary approach was applied that included: relationship-building; enhancing capacities to work with interconnections; enabling processes; and supportive action-oriented research. The findings of the analysis of the system dynamics that were occurring during the resilience-building process highlight that it is a complex and messy social process. Yet, it also shows that if quality and sufficient quantity of support and time to help surface and deliberate on underlying assumptions about communities and change is provided, it can be possible to stimulate emergence of beneficial reinforcing social dynamics that begin to support collaborative and systemic action. To further advance know how about resilience building, much greater focus will be needed on the ‘how’ of resilience. This, in turn, will require new framings of, and approaches for, community resilience and new framings of research, knowledge and knowing.

AB - Meeting global targets that maintain temperatures at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels while adapting to the growing impacts of climate change requires significant and rapid societal change. Within this context, there has been growing interest in building community resilience to shocks and stressors and as a forward-looking process. Yet while there has been extensive attention to conceptual aspects, there has been much less on how this can be achieved in practice. This research worked with three communities in Scotland (UK) regularly exposed to flooding and other integrated challenges to learn from action about community resilience building. A carefully developed four-tiered transdisciplinary approach was applied that included: relationship-building; enhancing capacities to work with interconnections; enabling processes; and supportive action-oriented research. The findings of the analysis of the system dynamics that were occurring during the resilience-building process highlight that it is a complex and messy social process. Yet, it also shows that if quality and sufficient quantity of support and time to help surface and deliberate on underlying assumptions about communities and change is provided, it can be possible to stimulate emergence of beneficial reinforcing social dynamics that begin to support collaborative and systemic action. To further advance know how about resilience building, much greater focus will be needed on the ‘how’ of resilience. This, in turn, will require new framings of, and approaches for, community resilience and new framings of research, knowledge and knowing.

KW - Action research

KW - Capacity

KW - Community development

KW - Regenerative cultures

KW - Resilience building

KW - Social dynamics

KW - Systems

KW - Vulnerability

KW - Transdisciplinary studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107666122&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11625-021-00950-x

DO - 10.1007/s11625-021-00950-x

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85107666122

VL - 16

SP - 1731

EP - 1747

JO - Sustainability Science

JF - Sustainability Science

SN - 1862-4065

IS - 5

ER -