WORKING PAPER Dr.Meruyert Narenova University of International Business (Almaty, Kazakhstan) Theory and Practice of Resilience Management. State of art for didactical and research perspectives in Central Asia Introduction. Resilience Management is a new approach which becomes one of the priorities in the context of high turbulent global economic, natural and cultural environment. Resilience Management has a key importance for sustainable development of any society. Number of different risk factors –catastrophic events- tsunami, floods, earthquakes, snow mudlows (sel’) etc. have a significant impact on socio-economic stability of society, but at modern time humankind faces new challenges caused by cultural and religious in tolerance and as a consequence -intentional destruction of cultural heritage. Kazakhstan located in Central Asia has to tackle all of these challenges and to elaborate Resilience Management strategy to keep the pace of economic development at high rate. Theory and concepts. Resilience has emerged as a fusion of ideas from multiple disciplinary traditions including ecosystem stability (Holling, 1973; Gunderson, 2009), engineering infrastructure (Tierney and Bruneau, 2007), psychology (Lee et al., 2009), the behavioural sciences (Norris, 2011) and disaster risk reduction (Cutter et al., 2008). Its recent appropriation by bilateral and multilateral donor organisations is one example of how resilience is evolving from theory into policy and practice (HERR, 2011; Ramalingam, 2011; Bahadur et al., 2010; Brown, 2011; Harris, 2011). Key terms Due to multidisciplinary background of the Resilience Management it’s an obvious need to have clear definitions of terms. There are some key terms embracing the basic scope definitions of Resilience Management: a. Resilience is understood as an ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a shock or stress in a timely and efficient manner. b. Risk: The likelihood of suffering harm or loss. c. Shock/Stress/Hazard: An element that causes adverse affects. d. Vulnerability: The propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected. e. Exposure: the presence of people, livelihoods, environment, economic, social or cultural assets in places that could be adversely affected. f. Transformation: the altering of the fundamental attributes of a system. g. Strategy: key policy measures to overcome events Regional dimension. Central Asia is a vast region embracing five former Soviet Republics. Dissolution of the Soviet Union had a significant impact on sustainability of these 1 countries as many risk factors have been supplementing their development over more than last decades. Among these factors influencing Resilience Management development in the region are: political issues (for examples, non-defined boarders between countries, “bad legacy of totalitarian state” – relocation of whole nations from their historically living areas), cultural issues (polyethnical compound of population and thus cultural diversity), geographical issues (scarce water resources and transboundary rivers management), geographical diversity , largest landlocked region and countries, close links to some countries with high risks (Afganistan,Pakistan), ecological issues (one of the planet’s largest environmental disaster (Aral Sea shrinking) and many others. Central Asia has unique and rich cultural heritage both visible and invisible ones that should be prevented from any challenges rooted from iconoclastic groups and terrorism attacks. Thus, objectively Resilience Management is of high demand in the region as well as in Kazakhstan. It means necessity to identify right and adequate approaches along with practical instruments and ways implemented at the very bottom and strategic levels. Some examples will be provided as an illustration based on regional specificity and uniqueness. Strategies in Resilience Management. Strategies should include systemic measures that is effective in managing risk is likely to become more resilient to shocks and stresses, though the exact relationship needs to be tested empirically. Managing risk in this context means reducing risk, transferring and sharing risk, preparing for impact and responding and recovering efficiently. It also involves being prepared for surprises – those events beyond the lived experience or occurring very infrequently. Strategies are to be elaborated with taking into account following groups of factors: 1. Climate change risks; 2. Disaster risks; 3. Economic and financial risks; 4. Conflict risks. Measuring of strategy effectiveness are possible by using next tools/means: 1. Risk reduction (reduction of pollution etc.); 2. Transfer or share risks (creation of different mechanisms etc.); 3. Creation of prevention mechanisms and indicators Conclusions. Resilience Management is an integrating concept that allows multiple risks, shocks and stresses and their impacts on ecosystems and vulnerable people to be considered together in the context of development programming. Resilience also highlights slow drivers of change that influence systems and the potential for non-linearity and transformation processes. It focuses attention on a set of institutional, community and individual capacities and particularly on learning, innovation and adaptation. Strengthening resilience can be associated with windows of opportunities for change, often opening after a disturbance. However, resilience is a difficult concept to measure and to apply to different operating contexts, meaning other framings and linked concepts may be more fruitful avenues in which to work with ‘resilience’. 2