Social resilience: the forgotten dimension of disaster risk reduction

Abstract

The current thinking in the Disaster Risk Reduction field emphasizes assessment and reduction of vulnerability and especially social vulnerability as an important factor in mitigating the effects of disasters. In the process of emphasizing vulnerability, the role and complexity of social resilience was somewhat lost and at times minimized. For example, Terry Cannon and his colleagues include resilience as a factor of social vulnerability in a report to United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) (Cannon, Twigg and Rowell, 2002). The United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) delineates “Social Vulnerability” and “Individual Vulnerability” as working areas, but does not mention Social or Individual Resilience (Bogardi, 2006).