Social resilience to environmental risks: A mechanism of vulnerability transfer?

Abstract

Purpose

The present paper attempts to prove that social resilience to environmental risks should be considered as a potential mechanism of transfer of vulnerability from one social actor to another and/or transformation of vulnerability to one risk to vulnerability to another. This means that social resilience should not be treated always as a desirable attitude; it is desirable under certain conditions only.

Design/methodology/approach

Widespread views are challenged by alleging both theoretical knowledge and empirical outcomes. By carrying out insights to the epistemological roots of the concept resilience, its use in the domains of ecology, social and behavioural sciences, and actual experiences of resilience processes to risks in Greece, the author re‐integrates resilience analysis in the context of systemic understanding of society, the environment and interrelations between the two.

Findings

The paper introduces a clear dissociation of individualized from collective resilience and evidences that these two forms may come in conflict. Besides it indicates that assessment of resilience impacts on vulnerability is possible only by taking into account the systemic interconnections between community actors, on the one hand, and between environmental, natural and socio‐economic risks, on the other. The paper provides a methodological approach to the identity of a resilience process, an approach based on the determinant factors of resilience: the agency performing the process, the utilized resources, the stimulus and modus operandi, spatial and temporal range of the process and impacts on several aspects of vulnerability.

Practical implications

Acknowledgement of social resilience to risks as a mechanism of transfer and/or transformation of vulnerability entails radical changes in planning philosophy. Planning should focus more on keeping the effects of individualized resilience within the constraints of the wider community interest and environmental sustainability objectives, i.e. vulnerability reduction for all and vis‐à‐vis all risk aspects.

Originality/value

The paper reverses widespread optimism about social resilience to environmental risks as a universally positive process and a panacea for dealing with social vulnerability. It introduces a new methodology for evaluating virtual impacts on vulnerability and revises the guiding principles and given assumptions of risk mitigation planning.

Citation

Sapountzaki, K. (2007), "Social resilience to environmental risks: A mechanism of vulnerability transfer?", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 274-297. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777830710731743