What is a resilient community?
In ecology, resilience refers to how well an ecosystem
can withstand shocks from the outside – a forest fire,
for example. The complexity and diversity of ecosystems gives them resilience, meaning that rather than falling apart when something changes, they can respond and adapt and find a new state of balance.
A community (or a country, or a global system) can also be thought of in this way. Over time there has been an unprecedented and dangerously short-sighted dismantling of the infrastructure that underlies resilience in our local communities.
A resilient community is one that is grounded in its local ecosystem, one with strong social networks, one with
a local food culture and a local economy based on real needs. A resilient community can respond flexibly to sudden change or disaster, and then bounce back and grow stronger, even when going through hard times.
Resilience applies not just to material things, but to our emotional lives as well; creative responses to problems, being open to other points
of view, and the capacity to share information and support are all indicators of resilience.
|
|
