Building resilience across communities

The future has always been uncertain. Particularly for the 300 million extreme poor in South Asia, one constant fear is an unexpected shock—a natural disaster, an illness, political unrest among others. While we cannot prevent all shocks, we can prepare and work to eliminate vulnerabilities. Building resilience means that as households, communities, and societies, we are better able to face what may lie ahead.

Let's talk about a few instances where almost the same magnitude of shocks resulted in different scenarios. In 2015, Nepal and Chile both experienced earthquakes of over 7.0 on the Richter scale. Over 8,500 people died in Nepal whereas in Chile the number was 11. Japan, experiencing a 6.6 earthquake, had few deaths during the quake itself, but the tsunami that followed led to one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, killing over 1,200. The trajectory to full economic, social and political recovery looks remarkably different across these three countries. That's why the recent shift in thinking in the development world has gone beyond post-disaster, post-shock support to building resilience of a person or a community or even a whole country.

Several aggravating factors that increase the frequency, complexity and severity of disasters are climate change, unplanned urbanisation, and poverty. In South Asia, where urban growth is rapid and unplanned, there is ample cause for alarm. For example, a recent study in Bangladesh concluded that over half of Dhaka and its outskirts are highly vulnerable to multi-dimensional disasters – both natural and human-induced incidents including flood, and waterlogging– courtesy of unabated, unplanned urbanisation over the past years.

While getting a comprehensive estimate of the economic consequences of disasters is difficult, the Insurance Information Institute reported that in 2014, 189 natural catastrophes caused USD 28 billion in insured losses, and 147 man-made disasters cost an additional USD 7 billion, equal to almost twice of Nepal's GDP.

So how are some countries or communities bouncing back and not others? This is where the concept of resilience -- a related concept drawn from psychology and other fields --comes in. Defined in a number of ways, resilience looks at how individuals, communities, and systems cope with trauma and shocks.

At a minimum, in the development context resilience means the capacity to anticipate, prepare for, cope with, and recover from shocks and bounce back to where one was before the shocks occurred. Equally important, increased resilience could also improve livelihoods and support economic growth and transformation while mitigating vulnerability to future shocks.

A guaranteed way to ensure that people are resilient is to reduce vulnerabilities. As there is a clear link between poverty and vulnerability, one of the first measures to building resilience is to alleviate poverty and the causes that contribute to it. Others have looked at the linkage between social cohesion and community and death tolls from events like heat waves, finding that strong social networks are an important form of protection. More recently, the increasing household ownership of mobile phones has greatly enhanced the flow of information that enables communities to both prepare earlier for disasters, and mobilise more resources in the aftermath.

Agriculture is another particularly important area of focus for a couple of reasons. First, there is the challenge of feeding more people as arable land shrinks. Second, fluctuations of food prices can be a significant shock for families. Women's consumption often drops first in the household in times of a price hike. But if prices remain high, families may cope by cutting the intake ofnutritious food, selling assets, taking children out of school, and avoiding health expenditures.

To date, much of the action in South Asia has been reactive; there has been little strategic planning on issues of addressing urbanisation, the consequences of climate change, or disaster preparedness. However, with several large and rapidly growing economies, India and other South Asian nations need to ensure that they are developing in a way that won't exacerbate the problems.

One promising area where several governments are experimenting is in the use of technology. An obvious application is to create alerts for approaching hazards, especially fast moving cyclones when minutes count.

When looking at solutions for resilience that will be feasible to scale up to the millions or even billions, cost is a key factor to keep in mind. In recent years, the term frugal innovation has grown in popularity as a way to describe what comes naturally to many operating in resource-constrained settings: creatively improvising with what's available to solve a pressing need. South Asia is known for frugal solutions.

This year, BRAC, world's largest development organisation, is hosting its fourth Frugal Innovation Forum, exploring questions in development and resilience. Starting from innovative approaches to the best practices, lessons learned from previous experiences, to the role of technology, society and organisations in scaling resilience in our communities. This event provides a platform for practitioners to explore effective innovations and create opportunities for dialogue among leaders in the global south.

These approaches and the frugal innovation mindset are what are needed to build resilience, particularly in thinking about how to ensure opportunities for the poor to thrive.

Maria May is a senior programme manager at BRAC's social innovation lab and microfinance programme. Rakib Avi is a communications and partnership manager at BRAC.