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What Does "Resilience" Mean For Donors?
What Does "Resilience" Mean For Donors?
An OECD factsheet
Introduction
ver the last two years, the concept of resilience has achieved significant attention on the international stage. Why? Because there is a growing recognition that different types of risks violence and conflict, climate change, disasters, global shocks, and other risk factors such as urbanisation and ageing populations are inter-connected. Working in silos no longer makes sense - if we are to deal with these risks properly, donors, development actors, and states will need to work more closely together. How can resilience help? Resilience offers an excellent rallying point to connect the different policy communities working on different types of risks. Resilience as a common goal has the potential to bring together humanitarians, stabilisation and development actors; actors working on disaster risk reduction, conflict prevention and climate change; and others working on social, economic and institutional development. These actors will be able to join forces to understand how risks can be identified and addressed, and to strengthen the resilience of those people and systems (the layers) who need it most individuals, communities, and developing states and their institutions. And yet, it has proven difficult to systematically translate the numerous international commitments to resilience, and the ongoing goodwill, into better working practices on the ground. This fact sheet, drawn from the results of an online brainstorming survey (Annex A) and a literature review, aims to clarify what resilience means in practice. It will also outline how the OECD will support donors to deliver effective resilience programming in the future.
all risk from individuals and communities, as evidence, particularly in the agricultural sector, shows that this creates perverse incentives and can encourage overly risky behaviour. Instead we need a more holistic risk management approach that focuses on both the interactions between different types of risks, and between the strategies designed to manage those risks. How can we do this? By building the policies, strategies and tools that empower individuals, communities and states to effectively manage their own layer of risk. In practice, this means that the individual should be provided with the tools and conditions including through market mechanisms that s/he requires to manage those risks that are frequent but not too damaging, such as theft of assets, illness or injury, or small variations in crop yields. The community should be provided with the tools and conditions they require to manage risks that are not too damaging but require collective responses, such as land disputes, localised air and water pollution and disease outbreaks. Catastrophic risks, those that can result in significant losses for a great number of people, are best managed by tools of the state, or even regionally and globally. These risks include major natural disasters, terrorism, cyber risks, financial system failures, overfishing, ocean acidification and transnational crime. Building resilience involves providing the tools and conditions for the state to be able to manage these types of risks effectively. Taken together, these tools and conditions for individuals, communities and states are known as the components of resilience.
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legitimacy: good governance and rule of law, participation, accountability and responsiveness, corruption control domestic revenue (tax) collection energy security innovation long-term planning leadership spare capacity: crisis response capacity
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My organisation is:
Red Cross / Red Crescent 22%
I work in:
Intl Organisation 10%
Developing country 7%
Consultant 6%
Donor 5%
Development Bank 4%
Other 8%
Further Reading
OECD/G20 methodological framework on disaster risk assessment and risk financing www.oecd.org/gov/risk/g20oecdframeworkfordisasterriskmanagement.htm This methodological framework for disaster risk assessment and risk financing is intended to help finance ministries and other governmental authorities in developing more effective disaster risk management strategies and, in particular, financial strategies, building on strengthened risk assessment and risk financing. While the framework does not specifically explore disaster risk reduction policies, it highlights the strong interconnections between disaster risk assessment, risk reduction and financial management, key building blocks for dynamic and continually evolving disaster risk management strategies. Managing risk in agriculture: Policy assessment and design www.oecd.org/tad/agricultural-policies/riskmanagementinagriculture.htm What are the implications of risk management for agricultural policy? Drawing on OECD case studies and workshops, this book looks at management principles and guidelines for policy design in agriculture, as well as quantitative analysis of risk. Managing risks in fragile situations www.oecd.org/dac/incaf/managingrisksinfragilesituations.htm International engagement in transitional situations presents significant risks for donors and implementing partners, but also holds the potential for substantial rewards in terms of improved results and outcomes. Indeed, more often than not, the risks associated with not engaging in these contexts both for the countries themselves and for the international community outweigh most of the risks of engaging in the first place. The question therefore is not whether to engage but how to engage in ways that are context-specific and do not come at an unacceptable cost. Future global shocks: Improving risk governance www.oecd.org/governance/risk/ Recent global shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis, have driven policy makers and industry strategists to re-examine how to prepare for and respond to events that can begin locally and propagate around the world with devastating effects on society and the economy. The report looks at examples of hazards and threats that emerge from the financial world, cyberspace, biological systems and even the solar system, to reflect on what strategic capacities are called for to improve assessment, mapping, modeling, response and resilience to such large scale risks.
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