Community Resilience: Informing Policy

As I may have stated earlier in this blog, one of the tensions in the Community and Regional Resilience Institute work from the very beginning has been between what I call “getting it right” and “getting it now.” By that I mean that it is critical for the nation that the solutions we adopt to increase our resilience work in practice because they are grounded in knowledge gained from research and from practical experience. That’s getting it right. But we also have to realize that the nation needs solutions now. The next hurricane or tornado or terrorist won’t wait until we get it exactly right.

I’m not sure that this tension is recognized at the national level. I don’t claim to have great insight into or knowledge of all that is going on nationally on the resilience front but from my limited view of current processes and deliberations two things seem apparent. First, there is limited interaction between those scholars and researchers who have studied the various aspects of resilience for years and the policy community that is seeking to frame policies and processes for a more resilient nation. Second, virtually every federal agency is embracing a fairly parochial view of resilience with very little understanding of what other agencies (often in the same department) are doing.

I have been told that the first observation is not surprising. It has taken 25 years for the scientific community to begin to influence and have an actual impact on policy surrounding climate change. It seems to me that we should be trying to accelerate this interaction in the current resilience discussion.

Separate acceptance of resilience as an agency goal without understanding other efforts is likely to produce multiple, overlapping, and conflicting programs that will confuse and frustrate our communities and citizens. Coordination at the federal level is absolutely required now.