by Zainab Moallin in ODI.org…Are humanitarian efforts, despite their best intentions, diminishing civil society’s capacity to advocate for systemic change with the state? How do interactions with the state shape the roles of CSOs seeking to represent vulnerable and marginalised segments of society? And how are CSOs being employed as part of the dominant international aid architecture to maintain ‘business as usual’ and limit state-led crisis response?
More from this author
AI Snake Oil—A New Book by 2 Princeton University Computer Scientists
by Eric Topol in Ground Truths….A Counter to the Hype and Some Misleading Claims
The Earth Does Not Speak in Prose, A conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
Interviewed by Charlotte Du Cann, Paul Kingsnorth, writer and Dark Mountain co-founder….writes about forging a language that can speak with and for the more-than-human world.
GAR Special Report 2024: Forensic insights for future resilience learning from past disasters
from the GAR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction…If we accept that disasters are neither natural nor inevitable, then we must work to prevent or at least reduce their impact.
Our polycrisis demands a radically new approach to risk management
By Ruth Richardson in Open Access Government…A fundamental part of the problem is that our current tools and strategies aren’t designed to assess the types of systemic risks that we face: risks that manifest as extreme global shocks, interconnect with one another, and turn into long-term crises. More often than not, risk assessment is siloed or focused only narrowly on certain issues or “known” problems.
The Regeneration Handbook: System-changing strategies
by Don Hall in Resilience.org…Many Transition Initiatives, from Fujino, Japan, to London, England, have started their own community-owned renewable energy companies. These entities typically raise funds by offering shares to local investors, some of whom pitch in as little as a few hundred dollars, then use those funds to purchase, install, and maintain solar photovoltaic arrays and wind turbines. The community as a whole benefits from increased renewable energy production, and small local investors, instead of utility company executives and shareholders, reap the financial benefits.
The security blind spot: Cascading climate impacts and tipping points threaten national security
by Laurie Laybourn, et al. in IPPR…Recent governments have not considered climate change a priority national security issue. But climate-security threats are non-linear and are escalating, posing profound challenges to national and international security.
Applying resilience thinking
from Stockholm Resilience Centre….Simply enhancing the resilience of the existing ecosystem services can entrench and exacerbate inequalities. Important trade-offs exist between different ecosystem services (e.g. crop production and biodiversity), and it is not possible to enhance the resilience of all ecosystem services simultaneously.
Hurricane Helene isn’t an outlier. It’s a harbinger of the future.
by John Morales in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…And then came the rain.
Preliminary storm-total rainfall measured on the ground included nearly 31 inches (782 millimeters) in Yancey County, northeast of Asheville, North Carolina. Radar estimated totals in areas where there were no rain gauges exceeded 40 inches (1,000 mm) just over the state line in South Carolina’s Greenville County.
Chartbook 325: Wrestling with transition thinking. Or on being “interregnumed” and how to resist it. (Hegemony notes 8)
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook 325…The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.