Social dynamics of community resilience building in the face of climate change: the case of three Scottish communities

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Ioan Fazey
  • Esther Carmen
  • Helen Ross
  • Jennifer Rao-Williams
  • Anthony Hodgson
  • Beverley A. Searle
  • Husam AlWaer
  • Jasper O. Kenter
  • Katharine Knox
  • James R. A. Butler
  • Kris A. Murray
  • Fiona M. Smith
  • Lindsay C. Stringer
  • Samarthia Thankappan

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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSustainability Science
Volume16
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)1731-1747
Number of pages17
ISSN1862-4065
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.09.2021

Bibliographical note

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.

    Research areas

  • Action research, Capacity, Community development, Regenerative cultures, Resilience building, Social dynamics, Systems, Vulnerability
  • Transdisciplinary studies

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