Ever since the words adaptation and resiliency became popularized a number of years ago I've always pondered the differences between the two. This is similar to figuring out the differences between protection and mitigation.
Yesterday I read a great piece in the NY Times, see Learning to Bounce Back
This is an Op-ed that does a nice job of advocating for resiliency in our infrastructure and in our people. If the strength of our nation is in our people then there is a need for psychological and physiological resilience if we are to recover quickly from disasters.
Interestingly I had not read previously about a group of people pushing back on "adaptation" as a strategy. This is because they see it as surrendering to the inevitable and not dealing with the causes of climate change. Emergency managers rarely dip our toes in the global warming pool of thought and action. Instead we are dealing with the results, the consequences as we call it, of the warming planet. Mitigation, adaptation and resiliency (MAR) are what we need to be about. We can support the efforts of others, but our bread and butter is MAR and it is what we need to be about.
Perhaps one sentence from the article has a great summary of the three, "Combating those kinds of disruptions isn’t just about building higher walls [mitigation] — it’s about accommodating the waves [adaptation]." Which then leads to resiliency!
Alessandra Jerolleman shared the link to the Op-ed.
