How Resilient is Cambridge wrapped up yesterday. (Actually, three weeks ago. It was a lot, I've been recovering from it.)
We wrote a report summarising all our findings. It came out pretty well and I encourage you to check it out, but I'll summarise the take aways here.
https://www.resilienceweb.org.uk/news/HRC_report_launch
#resilience #CommunityPower #SystemsThinking #community #ClimateCrisis
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1. We must plan now for the future
Waiting is going to make all our problems worse. Our energy and flooding infrastructure is old and in need of upgrading. The risk of flooding increases with climate change and continued urban growth. Our food systems operate on ‘just in time’ fulfillment chains that provide no buffer to external shocks. Delaying work to improve these systems increases risk.
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2. Take an honest look at what is currently happening
Understanding the impact of policy means listening to those who are the most affected, not who has the most power. Some of the issues facing Cambridge are things that are difficult to assign responsibility to, including the ongoing crisis of inequality.
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3. Cascading interconnections
A systems approach is required to understand the very interconnected problems we face. Often referred to internationally as the polycrisis, we have heard about the cascading impacts of flooding on energy, transportation, communications, and the reliance of all of our communication systems and sewage pump systems on the power staying on. Further, all the issues are amplified by inequality and will affect the most vulnerable first.
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4. Government silos are inflexible, with action too conservative or too restrictive
Resilience action can easily fall between government silos. Food is not considered to be critical infrastructure. Agriculture and Planning do not intersect, so planning for food policy (e.g. adding storage and buffers) has no clear home or owner despite being needed. Even if responsibility is clear, inadequate maintenance of infrastructure (flooding, energy, …) is itself an issue.
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5. Privatisation does not mean responsibility
If private interests can't make a profit, they only take as much care and responsibility as much as they are legally required to. On important issues like whether there should be battery backups in cell stations, neither the cell provider nor the power company have claimed responsibility. Without regulation this will continue to remain an issue; it is too important to leave to private interests.
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6. Erosion of trust
Polls show that although people like the idea of democracy, 50% of people feel that elected representatives don’t care about them. We also identified a loss of trust in industry, for which the incentives are to make a profit - not to provide a reliable or robust service. In telecommunications for example, priorities have shifted away from dependability towards centralised digital platforms, attention extraction, and privately owned infrastructure.
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7. Inequality exacerbates all other problems
Individual responsibility for action is inadequate and unjust; we saw this clearly for food, energy, communication, and flooding. In a disaster, vulnerable people will be the most affected because they likely have the least time and resources to be able to contribute to a response.
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8. Flaws in system design
Most of our systems are not designed for resilience. There are choke points in the food and energy supply chains. Communications and flood response relies on single points of failure and becomes easily overwhelmed.
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9. Lack of knowledge
Many people have lost or never gained the skills needed to perform some of the tasks that support resilience. For example, schools are not teaching cooking or repair skills; we are reliant on smartphones to navigate, communicate and more.
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Those are the highlights! There's a ton more detail in the report:
https://www.resilienceweb.org.uk/news/HRC_report_launch
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In addition to identifying the issues, How Resilient is Cambridge also identified a dozen strategies that will lead us to solutions. https://www.resilienceweb.org.uk/news/HRC_report_launch #resilience #CommunityPower #SystemsThinking #community #ClimateCrisis [1/16]
Helen