Barriers to building community resilience to the impacts of climate change

政府间气候变化专门委员会第五次评估报告越来越有信心地表明，气候变化将对世界各地的社区产生越来越多的负面影响(气专委，2014年)。在下个世纪，极端天气、洪水、森林火灾和干旱将越来越频繁地造成破坏和破坏。政府和社区领导人面临着巨大的压力，需要保护他们的公民和基础设施免受日益严重的事件的影响，这些事件可能会压倒当地的应对和恢复能力。脆弱地区的许多社区已经面临适应能力的限制，随着气候变化的加速，更多的社区将开始接近这些限制(Dow等人，2013年)。需要进行更多的研究，以了解当适应能力得到满足时，在国家和地方范围内会发生什么，以及如何避免这种情况。潜在的后果可能是毁灭性的，可能会出现冲突、大规模被迫移徙和金融崩溃的情况。随着气候破坏性事件的频率和严重性增加，社区将变得更加依赖地方治理结构来进行救济和恢复。同时，各国政府增加资源以满足这一需求也是至关重要的。如果民众能更好地为灾难做好准备，这应该会在一定程度上减轻对中央恢复工作的依赖和压力。这一点在备灾研究(WHO，2007)(FEMA，2011)中得到了承认，然而，大部分研究侧重于地震或洪水等特定事件，而可以说，建立对任何破坏的整体复原力将对社区具有更大的价值。自然灾害造成的经济损失也在增加，2003-2013十年间达到1.5万亿美元。这些不断增加的成本不仅影响到国家一级的政府，也影响到地方和社区一级的政府。个人公民也将分担经济成本的负担，因为企业和房屋被破坏和破坏，生计暂时或永久地被摧毁。这项研究的设计将是有目的和解释性的--让经历过与气候有关的影响和破坏的特定社区人口参与进来，以收集对这一经历的见解。发现他们在建立个人复原力方面面临的挑战和障碍将有助于实现总体项目的目的和目标--了解存在哪些障碍来防止基层的复原力，无论是知识和信息、资金或时间资源，还是心理障碍(例如，它们是安全的，“它永远不会发生”，“[技术适应，如堤坝]将保护我们”)。

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report demonstrates with growing confidence that climate change is going to have increasing negative impacts on communities around the world (IPCC, 2014). Over the next century, extreme weather, flooding, forest fires and droughts will cause disruption and devastation at an increasing frequency. Governments and community leaders are under huge pressure to protect their citizens and infrastructure from increasingly severe events, which can overwhelm the local capacity to respond and recover. Many communities in vulnerable regions are already facing limits in their capacity to adapt, and as climate change accelerates, more communities will begin to approach these limits (Dow et al, 2013). More research needs to be conducted into what happens on both a national and local scale when adaptive capacities are met, and how this can be avoided. The potential consequences could be devastating, with the risk of conflict, mass forced migration and financial collapse possible scenarios. As climate disruptive events increase in frequency and severity, communities will become even more reliant on local governance structures for relief and recovery. Whilst it is vital that governments increase resources to meet this need. If citizens are better prepared for disruptions, this should reduce some of the reliance and pressure on central recovery efforts. This is recognised across research into disaster preparedness (WHO, 2007) (FEMA, 2011), however much of the research focuses on specific events, such as earthquakes or flooding, whereas it could be argued that building overall resilience to any disruption would hold more value to communities. The economic cost of natural disasters is also increasing, reaching $1.5 trillion in the decade 2003-2013 . Not only do these increasing costs affect governments at a country level, but also at a local, community level. Individual citizens will also share the burden of the economic costs, as businesses and homes are disrupted and damaged, and livelihoods temporarily or permanently destroyed. The design of the research will be purposeful and interpretive- engaging specific community populations who have experienced climate-related impacts and disruptions to gather insight into that experience. Discovering what challenges and barriers they faced in building personal resilience will help achieve the overall projects aims and objectives - to understand what barriers are in place to prevent ground-level resilience, whether it be knowledge and information, finance or time resources, or psychological barriers (e.g. they are safe, "it'll never happen", "the [technological adaptation e.g. levees] will protect us").