Risk and Resilience in the coastal Caribbean

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Resilience is central to the current development agenda and underpins approaches to disaster risk reduction. Fundamentally, resilience is about the ability of communities to predict, resist and absorb the impact of environmental hazards, so that they can continue to function as successful societies. The frequency and severity of environmental hazards, such as floods and droughts, are increasing in many LMICs, where environmental degradation (like water and soil pollution) can make recovery from such impacts more prolonged, and affect particularly the most vulnerable in society, such as the poor, the old or marginalised ethnic groups, who lack the social, economic and political capital that underpins resilience. It is particularly important, therefore, to understand how to build resilience in and for poorer communities to ensure that they are less vulnerable to environmental risks in the future. One important factor that influences a community's response to environmental risk is the way it has developed over time. Equally, a community's cultural traditions shape how they understand and frame resilience and any strategies they adopt to become more resilient. However, most research on resilience focusses on the now and the future and fails to take account of the importance of past events and responses and a community's cultural traditions and resources. For this reason, this network will bring together arts and humanities scholars with environmental, physical and social scientists, who work on the resilience of socio-ecological systems (SESs). It builds on two NERC/AHRC/ESRC (GCRF)-funded 'Building Resilience' projects, which have pioneered innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches to explore how environmental histories, governance and culture have interacted in making Caribbean coastal environments and their communities more or less resilient in the face of man-made and natural disasters. The network will focus on the coastal Caribbean, an area experiencing numerous and increasing environmental risks, including rising sea levels and more and fiercer tropical storms that affect especially the most vulnerable in society. The first event hosted by the network will bring together a multi-disciplinary group of UK and locally-based scholars, who work on the coastal Caribbean and/or environmental resilience, with external stakeholders from within the region to debate the concept resilience from different disciplinary angles; discuss the key challenges in developing environmental resilience in coastal Caribbean communities; and assess cross-disciplinary approaches that will allow for a comprehensive study of these challenges. They will single out three main challenges, which small interdisciplinary teams led by an external stakeholder will develop into proposals for either further study or specific development initiatives that will be discussed at a second event hosted in the region and attended not just by the teams but also interested local and regional agencies and organisations and researchers. Following feedback received at this event, the proposals will be written up and posted on the network's website and a policy brief highlighting the insights that arts and humanities can bring to an understanding of resilience will be made freely-accessible on the website of the Overseas Development Institute(ODI), the UK's leading think tank on international development. In addition, the experiences of working in a cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral network to develop effective proposals to enhance environmental resilience will be shared with other academics and external stakeholders through panels and roundtables at academic conferences and a freely-accessible paper on the History&Policy website.