The world needs a 'resilience compass'

It was the shock of hearing that some scientists had calculated there was a 60% probability of 4^oC rise in earth temperature by 2070, leading to human catastrophe, that kick-started my work creating The Ecological Sequestration Trust.

It quickly became evident that global resilience is a good general goal. We have to learn more about what it means in detail as we go along but the United National sustainable development goals (SDG) process is doing that right now.

The current development of UN post 2015 SDGs will be sufficient to define the overall resilience goal.

The concept of resilience is important. It means the solutions have to come from within society and not be imposed from outside if they are to succeed.

A global resilience goal is not useful unless we have a “compass” to enable each region and country to move forward towards that future and this needs to embrace and use collaborative intelligence.

We need to run fast to avoid the catastrophe and the right direction needs a ‘thinking global, acting local’ resilience compass

We are used to the idea of a “moral compass” and have developed legal structures around morality but there are few legal structures around ecological protection, which is something that needs to be addressed.

As Gandhi said “there is no point of running fast unless you are running in the right direction”.

We need to run fast to avoid the catastrophe and the right direction needs a “thinking global, acting local” resilience compass, which enables the building of resilience on the bedrock of existing and diverse culture.

I am sure this can be more firm and reliable if we can quickly build trust and loyalty and I believe this can be done with a “resilience compass” which embraces and includes culture, and enables the culture of existing communities including ecology, however diverse, to find a common purpose through collaboration.

Building on this we then come to reliability and a new opportunity offered by connecting scientific evidence to practice through a trusted “resilience compass”.

This is new because deep research evidence of all the complex global interconnections has never been able to be accessed by communities.

The Internet has enabled this to be possible and we know from personal experience that there is potential to use real-time information in our lives and, if we find it works, for that information to be trusted as a means to improve quality of life.

There are plenty of examples like public transport ticketing, timetables and arrival times

Earlier this month I travelled to Pickering in North Yorkshire to learn about their “Slowing the Flow” partnership.

Pickering has a long history of flooding, with several significant floods in the past decade. The partnership aims to work with ecology to store more water in the landscape and slow the flow of water downstream, reducing the risk of flooding in the town of Pickering.

The partnership turned out to be a fascinating example of collaborative working. The partnership brings together multiple partners.

The involvement of a large range of different actors, from local businesses to the Forestry Commission, means that when a solution is arrived at, it’s arrived at by the group; there is support at all levels.

This is not always easy, and in Pickering itself has not been a smooth process. However, the positive solutions-focus approach taken by those involved in the project meant that when problems arose those involved worked proactively to work around them.

One of the unique things about this project is the community ownership. Members of the Pickering community have been key proponents of the project and flooding solutions.

The approaches being used in Pickering today were not the first solutions to be suggested; the process of coming to a solution has taken many years.

What is now being implemented initially came out of a research project on ‘Understanding Knowledge Environmental Controversies’ focused on flood research and which involved science academics at Oxford, Durham and Newcastle University as well as eight people from the Pickering community.

This combination of local and expert knowledge allowed them to identify feasible flood risk reduction options.

The local ownership of the solutions was vital to their eventual implementation which everyone seems to believe in.

Peter Head is the executive Chairman of The Ecological Sequestration Trust