Unpacking Resilience for Adaptation: Incorporating Practitioners’ Experiences through a Transdisciplinary Approach to the Case of Drought in Chile

Paulina Aldunce, Roxana Bórquez, Carolina Adler, Gustavo Blanco and René Garreaud
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Paulina Aldunce: Center for Climate and Resilience Research, CR2, Blanco Encalada 2002, 4° Piso, Santiago 8370449, Región Metropolitana, Chile
Roxana Bórquez: Center for Climate and Resilience Research, CR2, Blanco Encalada 2002, 4° Piso, Santiago 8370449, Región Metropolitana, Chile
Carolina Adler: Institute for Environmental Decisions & Transdisciplinarity Lab, ETH Zurich, Universitätstrasse 22, Zurich 8092, Switzerland
Gustavo Blanco: Center for Climate and Resilience Research, CR2, Blanco Encalada 2002, 4° Piso, Santiago 8370449, Región Metropolitana, Chile
René Garreaud: Center for Climate and Resilience Research, CR2, Blanco Encalada 2002, 4° Piso, Santiago 8370449, Región Metropolitana, Chile

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-21

Abstract: Current debate on the implementation of resilience in addressing climatic impacts calls for more pragmatic means of reducing losses. In this study we aimed to generate context-specific knowledge about resilience factors for addressing the impacts of drought, with the expectation that bringing forth experiential knowledge on how impacts were addressed in the past would shed light on what constitutes key resilience factors for practitioners working in urban contexts. The study was carried in three of the largest cities in Chile: Santiago, Concepción, and Valdivia. The analytical framework consists of urban and regional resilience incorporating transdisciplinary approaches applying the Resilience-Wheel tool, combined with participatory methods for the co-production of knowledge and qualitative content analysis of documents and workshops. Results show that key determinants of building resilience to drought were: improving education and access to information, enhancing preparedness, promoting technology transfer, reinforcing organizational linkages and collaboration, decentralizing governance, and encouraging citizen participation. The Resilience-Wheel was useful for navigating the conceptual complexity and diversity of perspectives inherent among social actors. The transdisciplinary approach allowed us to co-produce key knowledge that can be applied to build resilience in future, through a bottom-up approach that bridges the science–policy interface.

Keywords: drought; Chile; climate change; resilience; urban and regional resilience; adaptation; transdisciplinarity; knowledge co-production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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