Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
at the ward and sub-ward levels. The availability of financial and other resources
is obviously critical for municipal capacity to provide services and enable
coordinated infrastructural development at local level. That said, the availability
of resources per se may not necessarily be what explains governance approaches
to adaptation. Also, in the multilevel governance system, constraints are related
to what the state does or does not do in terms of enabling the municipality or
directly contributing to urban investments and development. (See comparison
between Dar es Salaam and Saint Louis (Senegal) in Vedeld et al. 2012.)
implications for theory on resilience, coproduction and
multilevel governance
The experiences reported from Dar es Salaam indicate that resilience as a
concept can be useful for identifying important factors that might define a
'resilient city' and what needs to become resilient from a 'systems' perspective
(UNISDR 2014): individuals, communities and their assets supported by local
institutions, municipal services, multilevel governance and the political system
(Satterthwaite and Dodman 2013). We have seen how the capabilities of local
residents and communities depend crucially on services (including ecosystem),
financial flows, and processes that originate from outside their boundaries and
jurisdictions. Hence, resilience should be considered as a process, more than an
outcome. We find the concept of resilience a useful complement to adaptation,
as it indicates a capacity not only to withstand shocks but also to recover from
potentially unexpected events. However, resilience should be defined more
broadly than often implicit in the climate literature, with its narrow notion
of 'bouncing back' to some previous system state or maintenance of prior
structures after a shock (Bulkeley 2013:148). Resilience must include scope for
improvements in basic structures and functions if it is to serve to point towards
a way forward, beyond incremental adaptation to transitional adaptation and
transformation (IPCC 2012). This is captured in the disaster-risk management
literature in the focus on disaster-risk reduction and on the need to 'build back
better' (Satterthwaite and Dodman 2013).
Cities and urban communities need to be assessed with regard to resilience , the
capacity to act and deliberately change or adjust urban development (adaptation),
and transformation (Pelling 2011). Conceptually, resilience should reflect more
than the first level of adaptation, as suggested by Pelling (2011:69). Resilience
should be open towards the second level of adaptation related to transitional
adaptation , which is defined as targeting reform in the design and application of
governance and service systems (Pelling 2011). As such, resilience can become
a means for understanding and managing complex change processes. However,
resilience also has its limitations. For instance, it would not cover the third
level of adaptation, transformation , which, according to Pelling (2011) refers to
more radical or progressive changes within society. And indeed, transformation
in political, institutional and cultural systems is required in order to tackle
 
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