Building a resilient society amidst the climate emergency

Recent years have witnessed record-breaking warmest years around the world. The impact in India is all too apparent. Much of central and peninsular India has been suffering from heat waves.

With the warming of the oceans, we have witnessed an increased frequency of cyclones and floods across the country. The annual national public expenditure on disaster relief has doubled to Rs 29,000 crore in 2018-19.

The rising number of disaster events — almost twice it was before the 1980s — has made it obvious that it is not business as usual. The climate emergency can no longer be managed by a top-down command and control kind of approach. The tables have now turned.

Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the inevitable shift in the manner the first and second waves are managed — from national to state-level control — has highlighted the importance of locally-led action to manage at scale while remaining sensitive to context and rapidly changing ground situations. 

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Thinking local

Local leadership comprising – empowered young people, volunteers, and NGOs have always stepped in whenever there has been a crisis hitting local communities. They have a deep understanding of their context and have the unique ability to reach out to those excluded from regular programming.

They innovate within their given constraints. They have access, knowledge, and resources that no external actor can attain. They are able to harness the latent energy of their constituencies for organised action.

Local leaders are a vital cog in the wheel of resilience building. Yet, have these efforts have been recognised formally in the mainstream?

We have seen in the past that the best local leadership has emerged from a crisis that hit their communities. Such leadership has brought hope and confidence to people in throes of helplessness.

History tells us that the most effective community innovations have come out of a crisis. For instance, in preparation for monsoon season flooding, some communities in Assam build homes on stilts with raised floors. They keep dried fuel rods that can be easily carried during an evacuation and operate community grain banks.

Need for building resiliency

With the 1.5-degree threshold in global temperature rise likely to cross in the next five years, we seem to be grossly unprepared. As a society, we need to strengthen our resilience by building the ability ‘to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform, and recover from effects of hazards timely and efficiently’ (UNDRR).

These abilities need to be ingrained in our social and economic systems, in our behaviours and norms, especially among young leaders. Societies with their smaller constituencies should have the capacity to fail ‘safely’ while remaining agile to bounce back.

Strong social networks should work to provide timely assistance during a crisis. Most importantly, pathways are needed that can allow societies to thrive despite recurrent crisis scenarios and that which help in addressing root causes to reduce future adverse impacts.

Tapping the demographic dividend

Young people have an important role to play in creating a resilient society in this decade. Here are three proposals that would contribute to this goal.

First, young people to adopt practices that help in understanding uncertain, unpredictable shifts in future while working towards better incomes and sustainable lifestyles.

Second, to build bridges and use their voices to actively contribute to multi-stakeholder networks for resilience building — an all-of-society approach will ensure no one gets left behind.

And finally, to invest in innovative ways, including the use of technology to address the challenge at scale and urgency that the climate emergency requires while focussing on the poorest.

These young local leaders would then be able to enable a resilient society, which is geared to thrive amidst the current and upcoming challenges.