Comments on: World Environment Day isn’t about the environment https://www.archtam.com/blog/world-environment-day-isnt-about-the-environment/ ArchTam Tue, 25 Jul 2017 13:15:18 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Gary Lawrence https://www.archtam.com/blog/world-environment-day-isnt-about-the-environment/#comment-1221 Mon, 06 Jul 2015 18:30:06 +0000 https://www.archtam.com/blogs/?p=926#comment-1221 Hello Erinn.
I take your point — resilience can seem to mean giving up on stopping the negative drivers of change. I think of it a little more broadly and perhaps hopefully. For me and a number of my colleagues, resilience by itself is insufficient. It is actually the central word in a three word series — mitigation, resilience and adaptation. It is certain that the rates of undesirable changes that are within our control need to be slowed or stopped. I am actually more hopeful about this due to technological innovation and greater realization of how worsening climatic conditions relate to political destabilization. However, we haven’t the ability today to put the brakes on the climatic affects that are already loaded into the system due to combined natural and anthropogenic over the past 50 years. So, we must be resilient in the face of the events that we can reasonably predict. Given system randomness, we cannot know the specifics of these events, so it is necessary that we address those that are most probable and keep in reserve resources needed to respond to disasters. The lessons we learn in disaster response are what lead us to adaptation. Given what we will learn, we can dramatically reduce the cost in lives and property as we adapt human systems for what is more probable in the future. Mitigation, resilience in the face of what we can’t stop, and adaption in which we apply lessons learned are all needed.

Thank you very much for pointing out the inadequacy of the term resilience alone. We have to avoid believing our shorthand given the complexities we face. Sustainability is rooted in the question: What is necessary if we are able to continue? Resilience is just one part of that continuance.

Gary

]]> By: Erinn McKell https://www.archtam.com/blog/world-environment-day-isnt-about-the-environment/#comment-1201 Mon, 22 Jun 2015 18:00:46 +0000 https://www.archtam.com/blogs/?p=926#comment-1201 Gary,

I enjoyed your posting and concur with many of your ideas. Interestingly, since reading your article, the term ‘resilience’ seems to be popping up everywhere. I’ve been thinking about the importance of words and the implicit message within them… ‘resilience’….’sustainable’…. they certainly engender different feelings but I wonder if ‘resilience’ sends too optimistic a message, allowing people to continue on ‘business as usual’ because they think that the earth is resilient enough not to mandate an immediate change in human behavior. Getting people to re-evaluate their relationship to natural resources and their place in the global ecosystem will be neither quick nor easy. But it is urgent. I am an environmental optimist at heart though. I believe we can change.

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