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
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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’.
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