dc.description.abstract | Disasters have affected human lives, livelihoods, infrastructure, biodiversity and linked
socio-ecological systems since the beginning of time. These impacts have been amplified
since the 1970s thereby causing society to consider pro-active approaches to reducing the
threat posed by disasters. To this end, international organisations, national governments
and academia have created and introduced a vast array of disaster reduction theories,
concepts, models and policies to provide theoretical and practical tools for addressing
disasters risk. A contemporary disaster risk management concept that has risen to
prominence over the last decade is the concept of disaster resilience. However, despite its
prominent position in contemporary disaster risk management discourse and practice,
confusion still exists on what exactly resilience pertains to on a theoretical level, and how
to go about building resilience in practice. The thesis makes the argument that resilience is
often not well understood due to the mechanistic nature of most resilience theories,
models and policies currently informing our understanding of the concept. This
mechanistic approach of explaining disaster resilience often leads to a very linear and
shallow understanding of the processes and elements that subsume disaster resilience
building processes. In practice, the shallow understanding leads to a practical
implementation of resilience building projects that are based upon “one size fits all”
approaches which do not address the dynamic nature of resilience within different
geographic contexts. The thesis contends that understanding and building disaster
resilience is an infinitely more complex process than what is observable in the current
discourse.To understand such complexity, the thesis introduces Complex Adaptive
Systems Theory (CAST) as a possible new paradigm through which disaster resilience
can be understood. CAST is an appropriate choice as it is specifically designed to
understand complex human-environmentally linked processes such as disaster resilience. The theoretical discussion on CAST and its associated concepts is tested within the
context of subsistence agriculture within the Southern African countries of Madagascar,
Malawi and Mozambique. The specific context was selected due to the large dependence of these countries upon subsistence agriculture for income and food security, and the
subsequent need for improved resilience in the face of disaster risk. To gain a greater
insight into the underlying dynamics that encompass resilience in the different country
contexts, the thesis employed a secondary data analysis methodology on the existing data
set collected on behalf of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). A combined
total of 1110 respondents formed part of the study, of which Mozambique represented
40.3% (N=447) of participants, Madagascar 30.4% (N=337) and Malawi 29.4% (N=326).
The data collected from these respondents was scrutinised in greater depth through the
application of correlation and descriptive statistical analysis. This statistical analysis gives
insight into concepts of non-linearity, aggregation, emergent behaviour, feedback loops,
adaptation and context-based responses and how the aid in explaining resilience within
subsistence agriculture communities in the identified countries. The results of the analysis
are presented in four research articles. Results from Research Article 1 focused upon establishing whether there were theoretical
synergies between the concept of resilience and CAST. It was found that there are
inherent similarities between the concept of resilience and CAST, which provide ample
practical and theoretical contributions to the field of disaster risk studies. Article 2 explored
the role of information feedback loops in stimulating interaction between internal and
external system elements, and whether these interactions lead to complex emergent
system behaviours such as disaster resilience with farming communities. The paper found
that information feedback loops and interaction are key drivers for disaster resilient
behaviour, as information feedback stimulates improved disaster recovery and coping
capacity for subsistence farmers. Through the application of the systems concept of
emergence, Article 3 attempted to illustrate how complex emergent behaviours such as
disaster resilience at a macro systems level are created through the interaction between
micro level system components. Results showed that the use of a combination of
agricultural interventions, including small-scale irrigation systems, farmers' associative
mechanisms, appropriate crop varieties, and cropping techniques at a micro systems level
could lead to coping strategies and hazard avoidance strategies that contribute to the
overall resilience of farming communities at a macro systems level. Article 4 explored the
notion that emergent behaviours such as those discussed in Article 3 are often non-linear
in nature. Results from the analysis of subsistence agriculture communities illustrated that
community resilience profiles are uniquely different from context to context. This has
implications for the theory and practice of disaster resilience, as it would mean that resilience and the building thereof could not be understood by means of one size fits all
approaches, and that there should be a move towards more flexible and context specific
resilience building tools and methodologies. The research showed that CAST is a useful tool for understanding resilience on two levels
- theory and practice. On a theoretical level the study showed that CAST is an appropriate
tool to explore disaster resilience, as it is ideally suited to provide insight into systems that
are subject to constant change, learning and adaption. This capability of CAST is
consistent with the operational definition of resilience presented in the thesis, and the
contemporary thinking of disaster resilience as a process of “building back better” or
“bouncing forward”. On a practical level the thesis showed that systems tools such as
information feedback loops, emergent behaviour and non-linearity provide disaster
scientists with a means to explore deeper dynamics and processes that underlie resilience
behaviour in at-risk communities. To this end, information feedback loops aid our
understanding of interactions that drive adaptive behaviour, emergence allows us to
understand micro level systems interactions and how these interactions lead to resilience
in different contexts, and finally, non-linearity places an emphasis upon resilience and the
building thereof as something that should be treated as a flexible concept and
interventions that should be tailor-made to each community. Importantly, the system tools
identified in the thesis are inherently flexible, making them generalisable to all contexts.
This is because systems tools aim to understand the process of resilience building, instead
of providing an idealised version of what resilience should be. A CAST perspective on
resilience accepts therefore that resilience profiles will differ from context to context, but
that is crucial to understand the dynamics and underlying process that drive resilience
building. The thesis also demonstrated that the CAST perspective on building disaster resilience is
not only applicable to our theoretical understanding of resilience, but that it can make a
contribution to understanding resilience as it pertains to different contexts and settings. As
such it was shown that within the context of subsistence agriculture in Southern Africa,
CAST could reveal the composition and extent of resilience profiles within different
communities. Understanding the underlying dynamic associated with the resilience profiles
of individual communities is crucial, as it would allow for more appropriate resilience
building and development programmes to be implemented by local and international
development agencies. The addition of CAST perspectives into resilience building projects in Southern African subsistence agriculture will also contribute to introducing the notion
that building resilience is not a static outcome that can be achieved within a predetermined
time scale. Instead, it should be treated as a dynamic process, independent of
set time and funding schedules. This could have major implications for how governments
and international donor agencies should go about formulating, funding, implementing and
monitoring future agricultural resilience building and disaster risk reduction projects within
the region. CAST implies that future resilience building endeavours should be more flexible
in their implementation and funding procedures, and place greater emphasis upon the
bottom-up formulation (community centred approaches) of resilience building in
agricultural settings, rather than donor-government driven approaches that are often topdown
in their implementation and understanding of community needs. Through the application of CAST tools it is apparent that a Complex Adaptive Systems
paradigm of disaster resilience is useful, as it provides a means to focus upon the
underlying drivers and dynamics associated with resilient behaviour. This is a departure
from traditional paradigms of resilience which often spoke only to the capacities needed to
build resilience in isolation. Introducing a Complex Adaptive Systems paradigm to our
understanding of resilience is a recognition of the basic systems principle of “the whole is
more than the sum of its parts," or there is more to understanding a system than merely
understanding the individual components | en_US |