On Resilience

I went into the garden this morning and cleared one of the vegetable beds in preparation for spring sowing. I'll plant broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes and tomatoes, to go with the silverbeet and rhubarb already thriving.

Fifty years ago, unlike today, backyard vegetable gardens were common in New Zealand. Growing up in the 1970s I remember my grandparents' large garden, and the profusion of vegetables and fruits they grew, to be eaten immediately or preserved for winter.

This reminded me about John Robb's concept of the need for community resilience in the face of future system shocks. As Robb explained in an interview at Danger Room:

One of the likely “most likely case” futures is that we will suffer ongoing and rolling “brown-outs” of critical services due to system shocks caused by terrorists, pandemics, global warming events....the likely result is that system shocks will rapidly cascade to temporarily impair or disrupt those systems that we currently take for granted.

My solution is to build resilience at the local level by enabling systems that help communities operate autonomously off the national services grid for a period of time.  If that were to occur, autonomous communities little affected by the shock, would help to rapidly reboot the larger system.

[Hurricane] Katrina shows us that there is no real capacity at the local level to withstand shock, and that has slowed down recovery. People are still looking for a top-down fix.

A key measure, as Robb suggests, is to reduce dependence on complex and extensive systems, at both an individual and community level. For example, to insulate yourself from an oil shock, use cars less and walk or cycle more.

What would a resilient local community look like? Below are some ideas:

• It would be tight-knit, with strong grass-roots leadership and social relationships (such as family, friends, sports, church), and active and well-informed citizens. People would share a sense of community and civic duty.

• It would have close ties with neighbouring communities, interlocking into a larger yet flexible whole.

• It would have some degree of self-sufficiency in water, food and energy supply and wastewater disposal. Energy would be generated close to or at the point of use through renewable sources. Some sports fields and golf courses would become communal land for gardens, fowl and livestock - and providing local employment.

• It would be able, in an emergency, to provide law enforcement through trained units of special constables (recruited from citizens in the community), and medical services through a register of community doctors, nurses and paramedics.

• It would comprise individuals and families who are physically and psychologically resilient, e.g., who walk and cycle rather than drive, who have a working knowledge of cardiopulmonary resucitation and first aid, who have houses with plumbed in rainwater tanks, solar panels to generate energy, insulation to conserve it, and vegetable gardens.

These ideas are drawn from the way I envisage my own community's future. If you live, say, in a dense metropolis, not all the measures listed above will apply. But you get the idea.

(Postscript: I've updated this post after comments from deichmans, about the need for medical and lifesaving support, and Pacific Empire, about social relationships and civil society.)

Comments

[Younghusband]

Have you read John Robb's description of a resilient community in Brave New War?

[deichmans]

Nice, succinct description of traits shared by "resilient communities". I would add to that varying measures of medical and lifesaving support -- from all persons trained in Cardiopulmonary Resucitation and First Aid (both for adults and for children and infants), to a sufficient number of certified EMTs and paramedics.

[strategist]

YH - no, but I have ordered Robb's book, along with Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down.

Deichmans - thanks, and I'd agree with your suggestion. Where I live we have quite a few doctors (GPs) and no doubt people who have some degree of medical and lifesaving knowledge - but there's a need for everyone to have basic medical skills (one positive benefit could be that it reduces the number of people turning up at hospital A&E with minor ailments).

A resilient community would also have a register of the medical experts in the community.

[subadei]

The resilient community seems to assume that all members adhere to some semblance of social agreement. I'm not saying it's unworkable, but I do wonder what social resilience would entail in more ideologically disconnected aspects of society (ie, the inner city or even various rural areas of America or New Zealand.)

Personally speaking, my neighbor simply casts the "terrorist threat" aside as "neo-con bullshit" and so doesn't even recognize the possibility of danger. In terms of communal resilience what's to be done here?

[strategist]

"In terms of communal resilience what's to be done here?"

Probably couching the concept not solely in terms of terrorist threats, but hazards more generally, whether natural or man-made.

[Tom S]

"... due to system shocks caused by terrorists, pandemics, global warming events..." What a load of doom laden nonsense. The threat of terrorism is a classic example of massive threat inflation for internal political reasons. Terrorists are quite incapable of causing such systemic damage to a modern society because if they could they would by definition be longer terrorists but sufficiently strong to be a conventional opponent. Terrorists try to cause terror by random acts of violence, not via power cuts. Pandemics? What planet is that guy from? Even the 1918 pandemic didn't come close to bringing society to its knees and the idea of any sort of disease reducing the human population by even 10% (still around 700 million souls) is pure Hollywood. And global warming is more likely to be a slow burning fuse with a time span of decades.

"...[Hurricane] Katrina shows us that there is no real capacity at the local level to withstand shock, and that has slowed down recovery. People are still looking for a top-down fix..." is highly debatable, I would simply dismiss such a comment it at first blush as neo-racist ideological bullshit from a neo-con. If there is one characteristic of human beings, it is the massive ability to survive and show huge resilience in the face of the greatest catastrophres. The weakest link isn't people, its dysfunctional democracies producing ineffective leadership.

[Pacific Empire]

Great post. I don't think that you necessarily need to be on friendly terms with your next-door neighbours in order to promote resilience. Just as important is having a strong civil society, and resilient social networks across your community.

[strategist]

Tom - I don't think that one needs to be convinced about the idea of terrorist threats to infrastructure to realize that our complex modern society, with its web of inter-relationships, is highly vulnerable in certain areas. I'm thinking about oil supply in particular - in my view it's highly plausible that an oil shock could cause major disruption, given our society's total dependence on oil.

The 1918 pandemic is not something I know much about, but I wonder if its impact was camouflaged by the war effect - after the slaughter of WW1, people may have been numb to the pandemic's impact. And western societies were still on a war footing, so mobilizing to contain the pandemic might have been fairly swift. Also, and this is a point I make in the post, our societies were less complex then, and had greater resilience, due to a number of factors, than today.

Phil - thanks. I'd add that sharing a sense of community with the people in your area, even if you don't know them personally, is important. But surely you wouldn't want to be on unfriendly terms with your neighbours?

[subadei]

Phil/Luke (not sure which), I'm on quite good terms with my neighbor personally. We simply maintain ideological and political differences.

My point was that communal resilience (indeed any resilience) is nothing more than a nice idea without a socially cohesive definition and willingness to accept the definition of the threat at hand. Without that the collective means of resilience isn't, imo, possible.

Long story short, most in my community don't see the existential threat posed by terrorism, 4GW, GG's, etc. as anything more than a manifestation of the "neocon's." The philosophies, politics and foreign policies of America have brought us to this point and that if we'd simply follow the uber-liberal or utopian ideal x the threat would dissolve and we'd have one great planetary barbeque and we'd all sing painfully happy Monkees songs, and, etc, etc.

I'm very much in line with the idea of decentralizing security. But the idea of communal resilience seems a tad reliant on ideological homogeneity that simply (where I live, anyway) doesn't exist.