Resilience: This refers to a capacity for, or degree of, hardiness or self-renewal observable in a variety of organisms, species-types or systems of all kinds when confronted with disturbances, attacks emanating from their environments, or from within them.
Resilience does not mean freedom from disturbances or attack or change, but rather that the organism or entity so challenged has the capacity or ingenuity to survive and recover from (or reconfigure against) them. It does so using resources from within itself, or from a broadly conceived environment.
Resilient entities and systems are to be understood as sufficiently adaptable, durable and/or innovative when confronted with even extreme stress. They are not necessarily stable and unchanging regardless of the challenges (see, for example, Burnes, 2000: 206), but they are survivors.
Here below is a useful definition of resilience from ICLEI (= Local Governments for Sustainability). It is written with specific reference to the idea of a 'Resilient City' in today's context of climate change, but is in many ways generic in its applications:
"A 'Resilient City' is prepared to absorb and recover from any shock or stress while maintaining its essential functions, structures, and identity as well as adapting and thriving in the face of continual change. Building resilience requires identifying and assessing hazard risks, reducing vulnerability and exposure, and lastly, increasing resistance, adaptive capacity, and emergency preparedness" (see ICLEI)
READ: Program for Resilient Cities 2018
Pollutants: In social and cultural contexts, pollutants are those potentially or actually harmful (or negatively tagged) substances or materials -- or wastes -- which inadvertently or by design “mix” or variously remix with, and thus compromise the environment in general, or more specifically the cultural, aesthetic, practical or other utility of substances, materials or situations of value to discrete publics. Their unchecked accumulation can hit a critical-mass point at which they cause emergencies and even disasters in specific localities; and does, in fact, frequently do so.
Elliott (1994: 27) observes, correctly, that “All productive activities make demands on the resource base in terms of the raw materials on which they draw. In addition, all such activities involve some waste generation. These are termed the 'externalities' of production." She admits that not all production, and not all its 'externalities' harm the environment.
A considerable amount of waste can indeed be recycled. The opportunity to do so also seems to be increasing with time, as the requisite knowledge accumulates and cost-effective ways of leveraging them become more widely available and within physical reach. Thus, as the saying goes, one person's waste is a venturesome producer's raw material.
However, pollutants or wastes that "do endanger human health, harm ecosystems or interfere with other legitimate uses of the environment are termed ‘pollutants’” (Elliott, 1994: 27). Clearly, pollutants are the cause of pollution. The former are 'substances'; the latter a consequence, an effect -- or a condition.
READ: Pollution
Climate Change: The concepts of climate change and global warming are, though distinct, frequently used interchangeably -- and perhaps too frequently. In reality, global warming precedes climate change, which is its logical and worrisome consequence. First the world's average temperature(s) begin to rise and gradually keep on rising, and then local and regional climate systems begin to change in manifest and quantifiable ways.
Climate change has a wide-range of consequences. Its impact is already being felt in a growing number of the world's economies, and more specifically in agricultural production (and related food-security concerns). It is likewise felt in terms of measurable degradation in general human health, the environment, and the social fabrics of vulnerable communities and societies around the world. Sites of great historical and cultural significance to many countries, and to humanity in general, are increasingly under threat as well. Alarm bells are already ringing, but there are still many skeptics -- and many who are not quite alarmed yet, or alarmed but powerless to act in any collective sort of way.
[READ: "Concept: Global Warming"]
Selected Readings on the Consequences of Climate Change:
1. Scott, M.J., et al (1990) "Consequences of climatic change for the human environment"
2. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (nd) Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries
3. Wikipedia, Global Warming
4. Yambo, Mauri (2015), "Climate Change: Rising Sea Levels May Be More Dangerous than Previously Calculated, NASA Reports"
UPDATED: March 7, 2018
