Week 12: Resilience and Adaptation Planning

This week, many of the texts discussed new frameworks and approaches we have not yet discussed as much and tried to fill current gaps in research, such as local resilience plans and Black feminist radical planning.  In the text by Fayola Jacobs, she employs a Black feminist and radical planning critique of social vulnerability literature based in the U.S. Jacobs essentially argues that although planners have used social vulnerability research to better understand the relationship between disasters and inequity, they still fail to do things like utilize community knowledge, encourage community activism, or truly focus on and understand intersectional oppressions.  She suggests that planners look to critical race theory, environmental justice, Black feminist thought, and radical planning to further understand social vulnerability. In the article regarding adaptation to resilience planning in cities, the authors analyze resilience plans created by local governments in light of the increasingly urgent threat of climate change. They discuss the fact that cities are starting to use resilience rather than adaptation as a way of framing their efforts to prepare for climate change impacts locally, after historically moving on from sustainability or mitigation focused strategies.  Ultimately, they determine that while one approach is not necessarily significantly better than the other, resilience plans tend to be more inclusive and can be more flexible. However, this approach still does not have as strong of a “fact base” as other strategies or baseline assessment of vulnerability. In the racial coast formation article, the authors discuss colorblind adaptation planning and the histories of racism that shape vulnerable ecologies in coastal regions. The authors argue that this practice of colorblind adaptation planning will contribute to the “slow violence” concept we previously read about, as certain communities, particularly communities of color, will face increased impacts of climate change as their needs and socioeconomic realities are ignored while more attention is paid to whiter or wealthier groups.  Vulnerability to sea level rise is an example of how historical anti-Black violence and discrimination led to certain groups being forced to reside in certain places, particularly places hit by the most effects of climate change.

Several articles this week, particularly the one by Jacobs, made me think about how disconnected even well-meaning activists and professional can be from the actual communities they are trying to help.  This is furthered by major gaps in research, such as research on how colorblind adaptation strategies impact certain communities, or the differences between resilience and adaptation. It also opened my eyes to more forms of “slow violence” that really don’t get any mainstream attention (if at all) until this slow violence has reached a point of irreversible damage, destruction, and pain.  People need to wake up to the smaller steps and current racist attitudes and institutions that further this slow violence so we can intervene sooner, and be more educated about the racist past that led to these conditions in the first place to be more informed about ways to potentially manage the damage that has already been done and make reparations for past harm.

Some key terms this week were social vulnerability, adaptation, and abolition ecology.  Social vulnerability is a way of describing and understanding why some groups are more impacted by disasters than the larger population.  It can also be defined as, “the characteristics of a person or group in terms of their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard.”  Adaptation is defined as actions to limit the negative consequences of climate change. Abolition ecology is what is necessary to overcome colorblind adaptation planning through anti-racist perspectives, resulting in understanding vulnerability and adaptation to sea level rise in terms of racial coastal formation.