George Rebane

Resiliency has joined sustainability as desirable attributes that are getting a lot of attention these days.  It’s always been hard to pin people down on what sustainability means when we talk about conservation and communities, and I don’t think the job will be easier with resiliency joining the jargon jar.

Why is a commonly understood definition of these terms important?  Well, I think it’s because both will be important watchwords in tracking today’s flood of government monies and the attendant abbreviation of liberties that will inevitably follow.  The land is layered with government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and even for profit corporations all sidling up for the next politically directed wad of cash from Washington.

Odd as it may seem to you, getting a good handle on these terms is probably not in anyone’s favor in the money and control game except, of course, for the thinking taxpayer who will foot the bill.  And a good part of the game is to keep the taxpayer bamboozled as long as possible, especially if the taxpayer is also a voter.  So let’s do a little semantic shoveling.

Engineers and scientists like what are called operational definitions for the terms they use to describe and communicate their work.  Operational definitions let you design a bridge that will not collapse, an airplane that will fly, and an MRI that will pick out your tumor in time.  An operational definition requires you to do something specific and get a measurable result that then defines the term.  Feel-good, fuzzy, circular, and/or BS definitions that are much in use today don’t pass muster.  For example, an operational definition of height may be the number that you get when the vertical dimension of an object is measured with a certain kind measurement device, e.g. yardstick.

We’ll first take the adjective ‘sustainable’, and go to the dictionary.  Dictionary.com and AskOxford.com give

1. Capable of being sustained.  Able to be sustained.
2. Capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment: sustainable agriculture.
3. (of industry, development, or agriculture) avoiding depletion of natural resources.

Hard to argue with the first definition, but it clearly points to more digging.  The second and third are the kind of fuzzy non-operational definitions that start arguments and generate way more heat than light.  OK, let’s look up ‘sustain’.

1. strengthen or support physically or mentally.
2. bear (the weight of an object).
3. suffer (something unpleasant).
4. keep (something) going over time or continuously.
5. confirm that (something) is just or valid.
6. To keep in existence; maintain.
7. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
8. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; prop.
9. To support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of; encourage.
10. To bear up under; withstand: can’t sustain the blistering heat.
11. To experience or suffer: sustained a fatal injury.
12. To affirm the validity of: The judge has sustained the prosecutor’s objection.
13. To prove or corroborate; confirm.
14. To keep up (a joke or assumed role, for example) competently.

Clearly, in the sense that we have been discussing, definitions 4 and 6 get us the closest.  But not close enough, for there will be many variations on what “keep going”, “maintain”, and “over time or continuously”.  For example, how far above just limping along does “keep going” mean?  And does it “keep going” with its original resources, or by bringing in no more than a certain amount of outside aid (how much of what kind?).  Finally, how long is “over time”, and can we take “continuously” to mean without interruption, but again, for how long?

So the dictionary gets us into the ballpark – sort of – but most certainly does not give any kind of an operational definition that would be sufficient for, say, building something.  I argue that such definitions are unsuitable for setting public policy, especially if it involves my tax dollars and my liberties.  Unfortunately, if any politicians are still reading this, such definitions are not only totally suitable, but preferred by people who like to play with other people’s money.

Moving on to resilience.  The dictionaries define that property as –

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.
3. (ability) to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.
4. (ability of a person) to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

None of these are operational definitions, but all of them point us toward a productive direction as far as the use of the term in community planning and functioning are concerned.  If we look at a community as a system, we can make more headway toward something usable.

A system can be compactly described in terms of its state and how that state responds to various kinds of inputs.  A system’s state can be envisioned as a minimum collection of specific variables such as population, tax revenues, number of hospital beds, days of fuel on hand at normal consumption rate, days of food on hand at normal consumption rate, and so on that let’s us reliably assess such responses to inputs that concern us.  In other words, we want to define state so that it allows you to evaluate the operation of the system (community) in scenarios that are important to you.

Here we’re working toward an operational definition of resilience, so we’re interested in a definition of state that can help us measure and prepare for the community to bounce back or recover from certain kinds of shocks that may occur in certain kinds of, say, regional or national emergency scenarios.  Proceeding with such operational definitions lets us plan for more than one kind of emergency by seeing how certain abilities to respond are not just limited to one kind of shock.

But by now one gets the idea that to cut out the BS in such deliberations, we must get specific and quantitative right from the gitgo, otherwise it will be business as usual, especially if government is involved.  The fundamental question is ‘how will I be able to tell that I am doing well?’  In this case ‘how can I tell that my community will be resilient?’  So certain community state variables must be defined, adopted, quantified, and eventually measured/monitored that satisfy the community’s definition of resilience.

Here’s an example of an operational definition of resilience against a two week shut off of the ‘grid’ (externally supplied water, power, fuel, food, medicines, communications, transport).

The resilient community will be able to recover to full pre-emergency functioning within three months of the reinstatement of the grid, having suffered no more than 10% marginal (additional) morbidity, and 1% marginal mortality in its original population, assuming a refugee inflow of less than 1% of population.

In the same vein, we return to an operational definition of sustainable.  Here we would like to bring the community to a state of resiliency and, once there, sustain it in that state for some period of time expending no more than a certain amount of identifiable and reliable resources.  Here the fundamental question is the same as above.  So an example of an operational definition of sustainable might be –

Given the above definition of resilient community, such community is sustainable if, after having brought to such state of resiliency, the cost of its maintenance for the next five years will not exceed $3 million annually in today’s dollars.  (The source of these monies may be further specified for the five year period that resilience is sustained.)

To conclude, this type of thinking is foreign to almost all communities.  Instead, there usually arise one or few community NGOs of good-hearted, fuzzy-headed people who will make a big show of sustainability and resilience with poster boards, community meetings, and ‘consciousness raising’ events.  They may even provide copies of pamphlets showing families how to prepare and/or build websites full of good information.  They most certainly will get into the grant writing business hoping to get other people’s money to continue doing the same thing.  And, if ‘successful’,  these organizations will become the community’s focus on ‘sustainable resilience’ and will happily go into the future as the conduit for cash from unsuspecting foundations and terminally dim government agencies.  All will then feel good that the community is sustainably resilient without anyone knowing or agreeing as to what that means.  And the community will remain as naked and vulnerable as it ever was, but no one will notice until …

But then there’s always the chance that, here and there, one or two communities will be blessed with a local NGO that understands the difference between objectives and plans, adopts operational definitions for what it wants to accomplish, and will actually make a difference.