The 1-2-3 punch of hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria has made it devastatingly clear that extreme weather events can and will destroy families, interrupt livelihoods, and tear apart communities, particularly in coastal and low-lying areas of vulnerable regions like the Caribbean and the United States. 

Up to 90 percent of buildings In St. Martin, Anguilla, and Barbuda are estimated to have been damaged by Hurricane Irma. Currently, thousands of people on islands across the region are struggling to cope with ravaged infrastructures, impaired health care systems, and limited utility services. In the mainland United States, Irma and Harvey led to dangerous floods and record-setting evacuations. With estimates of repairing structural damage reaching into billions of dollars, residents of Florida and Texas may suffer from long-term economic consequences as they try to rebuild weakened industries. And rebuilding Puerto Rico’s electric grid, which was utterly devastated by Maria, will take billions of dollars and many years.

As we turn towards the arduous task of rebuilding, it’s crucial that scholars, policymakers, and civil society focus on the need for resilience. As these hazards intensify, the most vulnerable people will continue to experience dire situations, especially those who live where education is poor, resource-dependency is strong, and income is low. Investing in local-level preparedness in vulnerable communities and mobilizing members to build their resilience to disasters could generate significant dividends.

Who Are the Most Vulnerable? Four Factors

Who is most vulnerable is influenced by many factors, including geographic location, population density, socio-economic standing, and environmental change. Unfortunately, some areas are innately susceptible to natural disasters because of their sensitive coastal environments and heightened exposure to unforgiving geological forces. Small island states and coastal communities, for example, tend to bear the brunt of severe storms.

At the same time, urban population growth and migration to coastal cities has driven a build-up of infrastructure along urban coastlines, thus intensifying human and economic insecurity within these already fragile spaces.   

Socio-economic conditions, like poverty, also play a key role in shaping the capacity for communities to respond and rebuild after intense environmental shocks and stresses. Most victims of natural disasters — and the associated economic and social side effects — live in developing countries with lower levels of resources.

Lastly, global environmental change magnifies and compounds many of these factors. Storm systems made stronger by the effects of climate change, for instance, could continue to increase the threat of weather-related disasters in places like the Caribbean and southern United Sates.

Other consequences of environmental change and degradation — including loss of protective mangrove forests, coral bleaching, deforestation, intensified droughts and floods, sea level rise, and ocean warming — pose significant development and governance challenges that can make already marginalized groups even more susceptible and vulnerable to natural hazards.

Broadening the Resilience Agenda

The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development broadly defines disaster resilience as “the ability of countries, communities and households to manage change, by maintaining or transforming living standards in the face of shocks or stresses – such as earthquakes, drought or violent conflict – without compromising their long-term prospects.” However, there is currently no agreed-upon definition of resilience; such overarching concepts are inherently abstract and frequently disputed.  

One example of a contested area of resilience is the debate over the proper role of the military in shaping response mechanisms in severely damaged areas. While past events have shown that the military plays an essential part in rescuing and securing lives in the aftermath of natural disasters, to let one strategy dominate the resilience agenda could undermine the significant potential for other approaches that could strengthen the conceptual and practical robustness of disaster relief.

Looking beyond recovery, Joseph Fiksel and his coauthors highlight some factors that could strengthen resilience across a range of human systems. Within urban communities, indicators of resilience include diversity in economic sectors, social cohesion, resource productivity, adaptive capacity, recoverability of public services, and community stability.

Working with the private sector is critical to achieving these integrative resilience goals.  Insurance mechanisms, for instance, increasingly provide much-needed funding for disaster relief. Engaging  private industry, such as tourism companies, during the planning and prevention stages could enhance collaborative efforts toward building more durable and resilient networks.

Thinking beyond conventional approaches to resilience also widens the scope to include community members themselves.  Through local-level resilience planning and strategizing, individuals within vulnerable communities can mobilize to ensure their own, context-dependent security in the face of more intense natural disasters.

Agents of Their Own Resilience: Empowering Communities to Protect Themselves

Shifting to a multi-actor, multi-sector disaster planning approach prioritizes processes that improve long-term resilience and empowers community members to shape their own response mechanisms. From this point of view, we can see that those who are most vulnerable can act as agents of their own resilience.

For example, a Save the Children project in the Philippines that integrated health and environmental perspectives helped local residents plant coastal mangroves—a natural buffer from strong storm surges — as part of a local health care initiative. This cross-sector approach focuses on community empowerment as a means to build resilience while simultaneously improving health and well-being.

On India’s eastern border, human traffickers are known to target women and girls displaced by intense floods and extreme climactic events. During these moments of heightened vulnerability, the intersection between violence and climate change has devastating consequences for residents. Save the Children India has developed a program to educate young children about traffickers and instill a sense of awareness to safeguard against human trafficking.  Rates of human tracking dropped significantly in areas where these programs were implemented.

In 2011, following monsoon rains in Thailand, civilians mobilized to protest their government after it failed to adequately distribute food, water, electricity, and shelter during the ensuing floods.  This societal backlash shows that on-the-ground perceptions of the success or failure of disaster relief can influence the way civil society engages with governments — and sometimes lead to instability and conflict.

Grenada, a small island developing state in the Caribbean, was struck by a severe hurricane in 2004 that destroyed 90 percent of the island.  Subsequently, a multi-stakeholder approach toward rebuilding generated a proactive development initiative that combined external support with a regionally driven climate action plan. Grenada exemplifies the potential for multi-actor frameworks to facilitate preparedness and empower developing states to shape their own response mechanisms.

Lastly, research suggests that investing in secondary education at the community or individual level can result in better disaster preparedness and lower mortality rates in vulnerable areas.

Realizing Resilience Dividends 

Examining and investing in community-level engagement in the context of resilience building can contribute to unlocking three key resilience dividends, as identified by the World Bank in its report, “Unlocking the Triple Dividends of Resilience”.

1. Prevent damages where disasters strike: local disaster planning can help communities develop context-specific strategies for improving structural and economic durability in the face of hazardous events.
2. Spur local development: re-scaling disaster risk management to include both public and private regional actors can generate innovative avenues for local productivity.
3. Identify synergies:  multi-actor disaster planning can also encourage constructive collaboration across environmental, social, and economic sectors and empower communities to collectively tackle multi-dimensional sources of vulnerability.