doi:10.1111/disa.

12107

Positioning resilience for 2015: the role

of resistance, incremental adjustment
and transformation in disaster risk
management policy
David Matyas Sahel Regional Resilience Adviser, Save the Children, Senegal,
and Mark Pelling Professor, Department of Geography, King’s College London,
United Kingdom

Resilience is a ubiquitous term in disaster risk management and is an increasingly prominent

concept in early discussions focused on elaborating the post-2015 international policy landscape.
Riddled with competing meanings and diverse policy implications, however, it is a concept caught
between the abstract and operational. This paper provides a review of the rise to prominence of
the concept of resilience and advances an elaboration of the related concepts of resistance, incre-
mental adjustment and transformation. We argue that these concepts can contribute to decision-
making by offering three distinct options for risk management policy. In order to deliberately
and effectively choose among these options, we suggest that critical reflexivity is a prerequisite,
necessitating improved decision-making capacity if varied perspectives (including those of the most
vulnerable) are to be involved in the selection of the best approach to risk management.

Keywords: disaster risk management, incremental adjustment, resilience, resistance,

transformation, vulnerability

Introduction
The rapid rise of resilience in the disaster risk management (DRM) policy landscape
is marked in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 (HFA), whose subtitle,
‘Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters’, looks to place
the concept at the core of DRM aspirations. Focused on the ability to withstand stress
and bounce back (UNISDR, 2005, IIIAh), the HFA presents a decidedly conserva-
tive understanding of resilience—one committed to the maintenance of functionality
during and after shocks (UNISDR, 2005, B4iid, B4iie, B4iif ). While this position
reflects the inherited use of resilience from the disasters community, it does less well
at encompassing the emerging centrality of disaster risk reduction in DRM and its
call for action to tackle the underlying root causes of risk production in development
decision-making. In short, the challenge for the post-2015 HFA is to embrace not
only bouncing back, but also bouncing back better—and, indeed, loss avoidance.
Can these three trajectories for risk management be encompassed within the policy
discourse offered by resilience?
  In the growing literature on resilience, understandings of change within the con-
cept are diverse and often ill defined (Alexander, in press). Some echo the HFA’s

Disasters, 2014, 39(S1): S1−S18. © 2014 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2014
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
S2  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

conservative positioning (US National Academies, 2012), while others provide more
progressive interpretations (UNISDR, 2012). Beyond DRM, resilience has been
embraced as a priority concept by a host of more general development and humani-
tarian organisations (e.g. DFID, 2012; European Commission, 2012; FAO, 2011;
IRWG, 2012; UNDP, 2012; UNICEF, 2011; USAID, 2012), although with similarly
vague and varied conceptions of types of change within resilience. The Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Managing the Risks of
Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (Field et al., 2012)
is one of the few documents that advances the debate by delving explicitly into the
different textures of change, exploring the meanings of incremental and transforma-
tive DRM and the relationship between them. Nonetheless, as the sectors that
employ resilience as a dominant concept in research and policy continue to expand
and the meanings attached to it continue to broaden (Brown, 2011), there is a risk
that the usefulness of the concept will be undermined by a continued lack of con-
ceptual specificity and absence of practical evidence (Miller et al., 2010). The danger
is that ‘resilience’ provides a new term, but no new action on the ground.
  Given the widespread attractiveness of resilience for contemporary development
policy, it is likely that it will be among the key terms used to make sense of and give
normative direction to international development post-2015—particularly through
reformulated Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals and/or
the HFA. As discussions outlining the post-2015 international policy landscape begin
(UNISDR, 2012), what role should there be for resilience? How can a concept that
has existed predominantly as a policy aspiration be converted into a robust analytical
category? This paper aims to contribute to the post-2015 policy discussions by first
offering an account of the rise to popularity of resilience, and then by stepping back
to consider what resilience may be obscuring or crowding out by rapidly becoming
a normative, all-encompassing term. In particular, we suggest that resilience can be
imbued with greater analytical depth through the elaboration of resistance, incre-
mental adjustment and transformation as distinct (although not discrete) types of
change. The ability of this typology to empower more acutely risk-sensitive decision-
making rests with governance reflexivity, learning and self-organisation.

The confounding epistemology of resilience

The analytical roots of resilience can be traced to a variety of distinct intellectual
traditions. Engineering, psychology, disaster studies and social ecological systems
work have all contributed important interpretations of resilience. Engineering resil-
ience derived the ‘bounce-back’ analogy, which is closely related to the concept of
‘resistance’ in social vulnerability literature (Gordon, 1978) and the idea of ‘robustness’
in social-ecological systems theory (Schoon et al., 2011). Engineering origins assume
a linear system—or at least one in which a linear approximation is appropriate—and
focus on the time it takes a displaced variable to return to a particular equilibrium
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S3

(Ludwig et al., 1997, cited in Folke, 2006; Pimm, 1991). The psychological interpre-
tation of resilience is richest in studies of child development (Garmezy, Master and
Tellegen, 1984; Werner, Bierman and French, 1971), health, war and terrorism,
military life and personality adaptation, psychiatry, sociology, and natural disaster
management (Chang Seng, 2012). Here, resilience tends to be associated with the
capacity of an agent to choose a vital and authentic life, the process of overcoming
the negative effects of exposure (bouncing back), and the ability to cope successfully
with traumatic experiences and avoid the negative trajectories associated with risks
(emBRACE, 2012). While psychological resilience has largely focused on functional
persistence and the return to a particular steady state, it is capable of envisioning
improved psychological health and well-being, going beyond the stability seeking
of engineering resilience to consider enhanced resilience as part of a transition or
transformation to a better quality of life (Gail, 2010, cited in emBRACE, 2012). In
the DRM community resilience began to be employed as the inverse of human
vulnerability in the late 1970s, with increased use in recent years (Birkmann 2006;
Gaillard 2010; Torry, 1979). Although many interpretations of the term abound in
the disasters community, this understanding of resilience has proved to be persistent.
  Taking its cue from systems theory, as worked out through ecology (Holling,
1973), and drawing from natural hazards and political ecology (Adger, 2006), social-
ecological systems theory (SES) seeks to understand the dynamic, cross-scale inter-
actions of coupled human–environment systems. It provides a variety of heurists
related to these systems, including the notions of an adaptive cycle, panarchy, adapt-
ability and transformability in explaining resilience as a systems property (Walker
et al., 2006). Although the SES conception of resilience is primarily descriptive, it
does offer considerable scope for enhanced policy through reflection on scale, func-
tional persistence, self-organisation, social learning and flexibility. Given their roots
in general systems theory approaches, these themes can be applied independently of
a full SES framing—where focused attention on social or environmental subsystems
is considered more appropriate. Despite providing the most holistic interpretation of
resilience, the SES perspective as it is currently applied continues to show significant
weaknesses: it does not easily account for politics (Scoones and Voss, cited in Leach,
2008), lacks a consideration of agency (i.e. is more interested in structural change/
stability than the behaviour of actors within a system) (Brown and Westaway, 2011),
and has not yet engaged with emotion or with the opportunities for development
that arise with the collapse of system resilience (Pelling, 2011).

Attempts to operationalise resilience

Resilience is noted as an effective boundary object (Brand and Jax, 2007) that is capable
of bridging disparate policy agendas (notably humanitarian and development; see
DFID, 2012), but this potential has also contributed to its clarity being somewhat
obscured and its ability to act as a catalyst for new policy options being diluted (Brown,
S4  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

2011). A number of recent integrative frameworks have emerged that have attempted
to bridge this expansive conceptual landscape (IFRC, 2008; Twigg, 2009; UK Cabinet
Office, 2011). These attempts, however, are not all comprehensive and there are many
disagreements, oversights and omissions among them. Cutter, Burton and Emrich
(2010), for example, suggest that ecological elements cannot be included in resilience
due to the prominence of poor data quality and that critical infrastructure approaches
are difficult to transfer to the realm of community resilience because of their dyna-
mism. Social-resilience-oriented approaches (IFRC, 2008; Twigg, 2009) are widely
transferable and inspired by a range of resilience thinking, but they have tended to
overlook the idea of redundancy. So where does this leave us in our understanding of
resilience? Where has consensus been reached and where do contestations persist?

Resolved issues
In considering the value of resilience as an operational term for DRM, several debates
in the literature have been resolved, identifying key aspects of the concept that can
now be advanced.
  Firstly, resilience is not the opposite of vulnerability and, while overlaps exist,
they are best understood as discrete concepts. Besides the fact that perceiving these
as ‘two sides of the same coin’ leads to unproductive circular reasoning (so that no
new policy options arise, despite the linguistic turn) (Klein, Nicholls and Thomalla,
2003), there are characteristics or attributes that can simultaneously make us vulner-
able and affect our capacity to adapt (Paton, pers. comm., cited in Manyena, 2006).
Old age, for instance, can be a source of considerable vulnerability while simulta-
neously facilitating greater resilience through experience, learning and reflexivity.
  Secondly, although early definitions of resilience tended to be more outcome ori-
ented, there has been a recent shift towards a more process-oriented understanding
(Kaplan, 1999, cited in Manyena, 2006; Manyena, 2006; Norris et al., 2008). While
the former entails a fixed state, the latter can be understood as ongoing and dynamic,
focusing attention on decision-making systems rather than on their results. Solely pre-
senting resilience as outcome oriented tends to lead towards a reactive (rather than
proactive, risk reducing) position and a reinforcement of traditional disaster manage-
ment practice (McEntire et al., 2002, cited in Manyena, 2006). However, by present-
ing resilience exclusively as process, policy agendas and goals can be unhelpfully
abstracted. Rather than forcing a meaning on the term, resilience is usefully under-
stood as both process and outcome.
  Thirdly, resilience is about more than just bouncing back (Folke, 2006). Unlike
ecosystems, individuals and societies have the capacity for anticipation and critical
learning (Dovers and Handmer, 1992; Folke 2006). Both socially and politically
this means that, having learnt from an experience, it will never actually be possible
to bounce back to the same position. Even if the structures are the same, the indi-
viduals and organisations within those structures have changed, thus highlighting
the importance of reflexivity as a key theme in resilience. Furthermore, as will be
discussed later, social-ecological systems have multiple potential equilibria (Holling,
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S5

Box 1. Resolved issues related to resilience

1. Resilience is a discrete category and is not simply the opposite of vulnerability.
2. Resilience is usefully understood as both a process and an outcome.
3. Resilience is more than just ‘bouncing back’.

1996, cited in Folke, 2006), making it possible to ‘bounce’ or ‘reorganise’ to new

equilibria and not just ‘back’ to the same state.

Unresolved issues
Despite the fact that some of the conceptual debates have now been resolved, others
have yet to be determined.
  Firstly, is resilience a spontaneous or a deliberate process/outcome, or can it be both?
In the former conception, resilience is not something that is pursued or fostered, but an
unplanned-for or unintentional attribute that arises from the complex interactions
of system components. As resilience increasingly captivates the risk-management
policy agenda, however, we have seen an alternative conception of resilience emerge in
which it is presented as an attribute that can be fostered and developed. The empiri-
cal evidence on how resilience understanding is adopted and applied by practitioners,
managers, community leaders and policymakers in disaster risk management, however,
is quite limited (Berkes, Colding and Folke, 2003; Gunderson and Holling, 2002;
Olsson, Folke and Berkes, 2004; Walker and Salt, 2006). It is possible to learn from
other policy areas, most notably natural resource management, food security and
livelihoods, and health and nutrition, but it is unclear how applicable these lessons
will be in contexts where risk and uncertainty are involved. While research into
deliberate resilience building across integrated DRM systems is an area being pursued
with great fervour—particularly in regions such as the Sahel and Horn of Africa—
the evidence base remains limited.
  Secondly, is resilience a normative concept? Particularly, in the dominant social-
ecological systems perspective resilience is fundamentally a descriptive concept. While
it is capable of observing system stability, it is not capable of making normative
judgements about that stability, and, accordingly, it needs to be coupled with other
frameworks to determine whether that stability is good or bad (Pelling, 2011). If we
take a more specific view on resilience, however, systems provide ecosystems and
generate outcomes that may be desirable or undesirable for different components of
the system (Adger, cited in Leach, 2008). From this perspective, resilience is not only
normative, but deeply implicated in issues of power and politics. From the perspec-
tive of action and intervention, cultural values can constrain or enable a spectrum of
choices. In the short term cultural values can impede actors from switching activities
or capitals, thus limiting coping capacity (Arce, 2003, cited in de Haan and Zoomers,
2005). In the longer term reluctance to grapple with underlying cultural values and
their expression through emotion can seriously limit the scope of adaptation/resilience
policy (Handmer and Dovers, 1996; O’Brien, 2011; Pelling, 2011).
S6  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

Box 2. Unresolved issues related to resilience

1. Is resilience a spontaneous or deliberate process/outcome?
2. Is resilience a normative concept?
3. Does resilience relate to specific or general characteristics?

  Thirdly, does resilience relate to specific or general characteristics? A major out-

standing debate involves whether resilience making should be directed towards the
individual components of a system or the system itself (Carpenter et al., 2001; Walker,
2009). Resilience is not necessarily a positive-sum game. Building the resilience of
one component can simultaneously reduce the resilience of another, the system as a
whole (Miller et al., 2010) or of neighbouring systems, with potentially global effects.
The focus of resilience, accordingly, is by no means clear, with potentially vastly dif-
ferent impacts, depending on the locus of attention. Awareness of the differences
between these two types of resilience and the interaction between them is important,
particularly for policy development. However, only a limited amount of work has
been undertaken on the trade-offs between resilience and other development goals—
such as robustness and vulnerability reduction—or on the impacts that DRM inter-
ventions generate across systems.

Placing resilience
The questions outlined above do not represent a deficiency of resilience so much as
illuminate the need for greater empirical and conceptual rigour in approaching this
concept. At this point in the evolution of resilience as a potential guiding concept for
DRM post-2015, we argue that for resilience to offer its greatest benefit to policy-
making, greater clarity and specificity is needed in the type of change that it seeks
to address. Below we identify three of these options: resistance, incremental adjust-
ment and transformation. Choosing to do nothing is yet another risk management
state, but offers little in the way of intervention and is not pursued in this account.

Revitalising resistance as a legitimate risk-management option

Resistance is the most utilised strategy in disaster risk reduction, but is arguably the
least popular option among academics and critics of current risk management para-
digms (Pelling, 2001). Part of this apprehension relates to the evolution of resilience
thinking, emerging in no small part as a reaction to resistance and approaches that
failed to account for more general, systemic issues (see Folke, 2006 for a discussion of
the emergence of resilience and complex systems). While this critique of specific
interventions remains relevant in instances where resistance-led risk management is
dogmatically adhered to, there are certainly instances in which resistance may prove
the most appropriate and useful option. There is, however, an important difference
between uncritical resistance and resistance considered reflectively alongside other risk-
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S7

management options—a trade-off to buy short-term stability while longer-term

adjustments are considered or prepared for. Here it is the capacity for critical reflex-
ivity that emerges as an important theme, distinguishing resistance as tied in by path
dependence from a more critically conscious risk management strategy.

Incremental adjustment as a discrete DRM objective

Stability can be achieved through both incremental adjustment and resistance. The
distinction is that while resistance seeks to avoid disaster impacts, incremental adjust-
ment accepts this possibility, but is determined to return to pre-disaster conditions.
Incremental adjustment indicates a willingness and ability to adapt at the margins
(Handmer and Dovers, 1996) while fundamental systems attributes are to be protected.
Research and development will tend to focus on improving the outcomes of existing
practices or innovation to protect established policy goals and popular aspirations for
development. Incremental adjustment does require trade-offs between that which is
to be expended and that which is to be protected in achieving the desired trajectory
of adaptation, but not between comparing visions for development. Post-disaster,
incremental adjustment is expressed through an acceptance of adjustment (e.g. tem-
porary migration) and a desire for a return to normalcy.

The turn to transformation

Over the past few years a growing body of literature has emerged that engages with
the concept of transformation (Chapin, Kofinas and Folke, 2009; Field et al., 2012;
O’Brien, 2011; Pelling, 2011; Pelling and Manuel-Navarette, 2011; Schlüter and
Herrfahrdt-Pähle, 2011; Wilson et al., 2013). Critical of the ability of incremental
approaches to effectively address the challenges of large-scale environmental shocks,
transformation signifies deeper-rooted changes to areas ranging from individuals,
institutions and regimes (Pelling, 2011) to infrastructure (Kates, Travis and Wilibanks,
2012). Directly challenging structures and systems of power (Pelling, 2011), it has
been presented in the global environmental change domain as a fourth option to the
conventional policy triumvirate of mitigation, adaptation and suffering (‘do nothing’)
(O’Brien, 2011).

Options for resilience in DRM

In this section we present resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation as
three approaches for building resilience into risk management policy. In order to
deliberately and effectively choose among these options, we argue that critical reflex-
ivity is prerequisite for a DRM system that seeks to be resilient. Handmer and Dovers
(1996) first observed that across scales, choices made to confront risk and uncertainty
can be understood as existing in a spectrum from denial to incremental and transfor-
mational. They outline three states for risk management: resistance and maintenance,
S8  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

change at the margins, and openness and adaptability. These three states of risk man-
agement, and the associated spectrum of policy choices, correspond closely to resist-
ance, incremental adjustment and transformation, as can be illustrated through the
SES principle of multiple system equilibria. This approach builds on others, for
example the work of Twigg (2009), who presents resistance and adaptation as subsets
of an overarching concept of resilience. Similarly, from a natural resource management
perspective, Béné, Newsham and Davies (2013) present a continuum of adjustments
from absorptive to adaptive and transformative capacity, with each stage signifying
greater intensity of change and transaction costs, recalling the ‘coping cascade’ pre-
sented by Pelling (2011). While we consider resistance, incremental adjustment and
transformation separately throughout this section, it is important to acknowledge
that they could occur simultaneously in a system at different scales, as easily comple-
menting as antagonising one another.
 Figure 1 illustrates the different trajectories in development and risk management
implied by resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation. Under resistance,
the system remains at the same point of equilibrium. Hazards are either deflected or
not, with the latter outcome often resulting in catastrophic consequences. Under
incremental adjustment, the system, having experienced disturbance, is able to reor-
ganise its assets, capacities or capabilities, enabling a return to a similar equilibrium.
Transformation involves a more fundamental restructuring based on a provoking of
systems-level change, pushing the system towards a different status quo as part of
risk management. We argue that reflexive risk management systems are able to con-
sider each option and threshold beyond which one or other approach is preferred.
The positioning of such thresholds will be a function of risk tolerance in society set
against competing resource demands. The deliberate positioning of these strategies
requires reflexive modes of governance (Nelson, Adger and Brown, 2007) and tools
that can monitor trade-offs and critical thresholds (O’Brien et al., 2012).

Figure 1. Resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation

Source: authors.
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S9

Box 3. Comparative cases of resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation

Case 1: A city in an earthquake-prone region is concerned about its communication infrastructure in the event of a shock.
Early-warning messages are sent from a central hub via automated phone calls and the tele­phone lines all run beneath a
single street in the city. If a shock severed this communication route, all communication capacity would be lost. Resistance
planning may strengthen the structures that house the phone lines to try and minimise the amount of damage that an
earthquake could inflict on them. Incremental adjustment planning may involve a diversification of types of early-warning
communication to include radio broadcasts, bicycle riders with loudspeakers and/or messages sent to mobile phone.
Transformation planning could involve a paradigm shift in control of early-warning systems consisting of political devo-
lution/decentralisation and a radical shift in the ownership of information. Observed locally, information could be commu-
nicated upwards in real time through mobile technology and streamlined through online hubs (e.g. Ushahidi, Sahana, etc.).
Case 2: A community living on a coastal floodplain faces inundation from storm surges and the prospects of a tsunami.
It has a sea wall that has weakened since it was initially constructed and a mangrove that has been degraded by indus-
trial effluents from a factory upstream that is a major source of employment for the community. The local government is
looking to improve the community’s capacity to deal with these shocks. Resistance planning may involve reinforcing the
existing sea wall. Incremental adjustment planning could include a diversification of risk management from prevention
alone to also include preparedness. In addition to an enhancement of the sea wall (and potentially superficial restrictions
on the emissions of the factory to help revitalise the mangrove), there is also investment in education/planning for con-
tingencies in which the wall is breached. Transformation planning may involve a critical reappraisal of the local economy,
the possibility of closing (or radically altering) the factory, and the community employment structure so as to preserve
and regrow the mangrove (potentially as a new source of income).
Case 3: A rural household whose primary source of income is agriculture saves through cattle and small remnants. The
household faces the prospect of losing its crops through a negative rainfall shock and is contemplating financial modes
of covering this risk and smoothing consumption. Resistance planning may involve building up savings as a buffer and
selling the cattle or small remnants in the event of a shock. Incremental adjustment planning may involve building flex-
ibility into the household economy by transferring risk through the purchase of a weather-based index insurance product.
This product may be sold through an established risk-sharing network, thus complementing (or entrenching) existing
structures. Transformation planning may mean the liquidation of all assets and the movement of the household to a
nearby city after accessing its economic opportunities and services.

  Risk management trade-offs must be considered among a number of imperatives

that drive current understandings of organisational performance; others include effi-
ciency, equity, transparency and accountability. These imperatives may complement
reflexivity or work to obstruct it. Equity and accountability, for instance, can help
accommodate reflexivity, the former by democratising critical thinking and the latter
by fostering responsibility in the process. Conversely, efficiency and transparency can
impose constraints on innovation and experimentation, thus limiting the scope for
reflexivity (Pelling, 2011). Distinctions among the practical application of resistance,
incremental adjustment and transformation are exemplified in Box 3.
 Table 1 draws out the core elements of resistance-, incremental adjustment- and
transformation-oriented strategies based on the narratives presented in Box 3. In prac-
tice such approaches may overlap and interact. Incremental adjustment in a social
system, for instance, can constrain prospects for transformation and limit scope for
longer-term systemic resilience. Path dependency from previous administrations
and the incremental adjustment of patronage networks, for example, can lock a
system into a particular less desirable regime (Schlüter and Herrfahrdt-Pähle, 2011).
At the micro level high levels of trust between family or friends in conjunction with
mistrust for others in the community may create closed circuits of power, constrain-
ing the prospects for organised opposition and limiting the communication of alternative
values and discourses elsewhere in the system (Pelling and Manuel-Navarette, 2011).
S10  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

Table 1. Comparative case summaries for resistance, incremental adjustment and

transformation

Resistance Incremental adjustment Transformation

Case 1: Earthquake risk
communication in an
urban context
Hazard mitigation through
reinforcement of structures
to protect the existing com-
munication infrastructure
Diversification of early- A paradigm shift in the
warning communication control of early-warning
systems to reach a broader systems consisting of
network of actors political devolution/
decentralisation and a
radical shift in ownership
of information

Case 2: Facing the threat
of community inundation
in a coastal floodplain
Hazard mitigation by rein-
forcing the existing seawall
Diversification of risk A critical reappraisal of
management through the local economy, the
risk transfer possibility of closing (or
radically altering) the
factory, and community
employment structure so
as to preserve and regrow
the mangrove (potentially
as a new source of income)

Case 3: Confronting rain- Strengthening coping Building flexibility into Reorganising assets and
fall shocks in an agrarian capacity by drawing on the household economy lifestyle by migrating to an
household savings through risk transfer urban area

  There is no inherent advantage in employing resistance, incremental adjustment or

transformation. Preferred options depend on the viewpoint of the decision-makers
and the context. Incremental adjustment, which is often emphasised in policy and
academic circles (see Brown, 2011), may be detrimental. For instance, taking an
incremental adjustment approach to flood defence may leave a community suscepti-
ble to an extreme, one-hundred-year flood event. Resistance, conversely, although
somewhat marginalised in the literature (see Handmer and Dovers, 1996; Schlüter
and Herrfahrdt-Pähle, 2011), may be the most effective approach in a given context—
for a small island developing state facing sea-level rise and the increased frequency
and severity of tropical storms, it is useful to discuss mangrove health and improved
early-warning systems, but the resistance provided by a seawall may be the most
important form of risk management. Ultimately, resistance, incremental adjustment,
and transformation are distinct approaches to risks and uncertainties with varying
degrees of appropriateness depending on context and the actors involved. This is
illustrated in Box 3. Regarding the debate on whether resilience relates to specific
or general characteristics, we suggests that both can be important, depending on the
circumstances: while targeted (specific) interventions may be most needed in some
cases (resistance), more general interventions may be more appropriate in different
conditions (incremental adjustment).
  There are, however, limitations to resistance, incremental adjustment and trans-
formation. Resistance may look like the best option for stability-seeking decision-
makers. Under the influence of rapid social and dynamic environmental change,
however, this ‘all-or-nothing’ strategy can be quite vulnerable to sudden collapse.
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S11

Incremental adjustment (and resistance as well, for that matter) is limited in being
fundamentally committed to the continuance of prioritised systems functions. By
being committed to maintaining the system in its current state, there is no scope to
challenge the underlying values and associated organisational and governance forms
that give rise to vulnerability. Implying significant structural changes, transformation
has more potential to lead to maladaptation than resistance or resilience. Although
transformation may be necessary to avoid the sudden collapses or crises that an incre-
mental approach could engender, it may unintentionally damage necessary structures/
processes or make changes less appropriate for possible contingencies (Kates, Travis
and Wilibanks, 2012; O’Brien, 2011). Accordingly, it is important that steps are taken
to minimise the scope for maladaptation from transformation. It is also important
to ensure that transformations do not occur perpetually. Continuously cycling from
transformation to transformation can undermine the viability of a community or society.
  While it is common for scholars to reference ‘positive’ or ‘desirable’ transformation
(Folke, 2006; O’Brien, 2011; Wilson, 2013), this is also true of resistance and incre-
mental adjustment. Each has implications for the social, spatial, and temporal distri-
bution of risk and security. But each is also inherently political. Since these processes
are implicated in macro- or micro-level power struggles, we must ask ‘to whom’ they
are ‘desirable’ and acknowledge that those at greatest risk are generally those who
have the least say in these processes and least capacity to cope with uncertainty. This
is the catch 22 of risk management: the most vulnerable are not only most liable to
harm from risk, but also least able to deliberately choose transformative risk reduc-
tion. Table 2 identifies some of the key advantages and disadvantages of resistance,
incremental adjustment and transformation, illustrating important trade-offs among

Table 2. The advantages and disadvantages of resistance, incremental adjustment and

transformation

Advantages Disadvantages

Resistance • Allows for ‘business as usual’: established
stakeholders and institutional regimes are
already in place and are supported by capital
throughput. Investments are externally visible
examples of risk management with built in
political advantage.
• In isolation this ‘all-or-nothing’ strategy can
narrow down management options, often to
an engineering paradigm, excluding social
and economic tools for risk management and
so generating vulnerability to sudden collapse.

Incremental • Enables reorganisation without causing major • Committed to functional persistence, it does
adjustment systemic disruption not allow for challenges to the underlying
• Allows for system flexibility and diversity, values that give rise to systemic vulnerability.
supports redundancy, and incrementally can
open scope for experiments in decision-making
enhancing broader governance objectives

Transformation • Opens new areas of policy response by going
beyond existing systemic forms. Allows deep-
rooted causes of risk and vulnerability to be
addressed
• Can cause significant secondary costs as
systems reach new equilibria—costs that
may not all be expected
• If repeated perpetually, can undermine the
stability and viability of an economy, envi-
ronment or society
S12  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

them. These dimensions help to explain why DRM policy continues to be domi-
nated by resistance, especially in urban systems, although there have been recent
advances in incremental adjustment-oriented risk management, particularly in rural
livelihoods and food security systems. Regarding the debate on the normative under-
pinnings of resilience, we acknowledge that decisions about risk ultimately rest on
established values. Although resilience in itself may not challenge these values, criti-
cal reflexivity forces an awareness of their existence and transformation provides scope
for affecting change in them. Additionally, while resistance, incremental adjustment
or transformation may be the most appropriate resilience approach in a given context,
a wide range of constraints and blockages may limit action (i.e. the most appropriate
path might not be possible) (Pelling, Matyas and O’Brien, 2013).

Towards greater reflexivity in disaster risk decision-making

The range of interactions presented above highlight the importance of critical reflec-
tivity in decision-making, i.e. decision-making able to examine not only imperatives
such as efficiency of delivery, but its own goals and underlying assumptions as well.
In short, critically reflective decision-making is an approach that is able to reflect on
the position of DRM in development over time, a perspective—perhaps encoded
through the notion of resilience—that can reify risk sensitivity and uncertainty con-
sciousness in the post-2015 agenda. The mechanics of reflexivity, however, remain in
many ways opaque. Two processes that have been shown to help broaden the range
of ideas and actors involved in deliberation and action, and that have accordingly
helped to foster reflexivity and the sustainability of social systems facing disaster risk,
are learning and self-organisation (Field et al., 2012). While we consider these sepa-
rately, it is important to note that they are often complementary, reinforcing one
another in their collective contribution to reflexivity (Pelling, 2011). It is these capaci-
ties, we argue, that should be enhanced in the name of resilience—with specific
development and risk management trajectories (resistance, incremental adjustment or
transformation) positioned as second-order policy objectives that should be scrutinised
and elaborated in their own right, but which are not the essence of resilience itself.

Learning
Field et al. (2012, p. 56) find with high confidence that ‘robustness over time would
increase if learning were a central pillar of adaptation efforts, including learning
focussed on addressing current vulnerabilities and enhancing current risk manage-
ment’. Although learning is often about changing behaviour or doing things differently,
it can be about excising unwanted dimensions, processes or attributes. Reflecting crit-
ically on a past experience can enable actors or institutions to understand the impor-
tance of failure and allow for loss to occur (Adger, 2008, cited in Leach, 2008).
  Although learning is predominantly viewed as a positive process, the possibility of
‘learning the wrong thing’ must also be taken into account: processes like groupthink
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S13

(Janis, 1972), partially addressing systemic failure (Redclift, Manuel-Navarrete and

Pelling, 2011), and shifting epistemic (Arikha, 2007) and normative (Foucault, 1964/
1988) regimes can all be implicated in learning with negative consequences. Constraints
on learning must also be explored. In certain contexts, institutions shown elsewhere
to enable learning, like social networks, can actually constrain learning opportuni-
ties (Schlüter and Herrfahrdt-Pähle, 2011). More reflective, ‘triple loop’ learning in
particular may be easier to discuss in academic, media or even political discourses
than to implement in practice (see Argyris and Schön, 1996, and additional references
in O’Brien, 2011). Finally, as in resistance, resilience, and transformation more gen-
erally, politics and power are largely omitted from the analysis of social learning.
Competitive politics, centralised power and rapid regime changes (with an associated
lack of technocratic consistency) can limit whether and how learning takes place
(Pelling and Manuel-Navarette, 2011). Taking the idea of learning forward, it is
important to recognise that while it is about puzzling things out (Heclo, 1974), it is
also about powering forward (Hall, 1993): we can aspire to have equality for all actors
involved, but must also appreciate how hierarchies play out in the learning process.

Self-organisation
Self-organisation describes the capacity to form networks, institutions, organisations,
or other social collectives independently from the state or other central authority.
It describes both formal (canonical) organisations such as registered cooperatives and
trade unions and informal (shadow) organisations like networks of friends and faith
groups (Pelling, 2011). The emergence of new canonical or shadow self-organisations
is indicative of reflexivity and provides an amenable context for it through the build-
ing of trust and the creation of new pathways for information to flow and be validated.
Shadow organisations, in particular, operating beyond the purview of formal admin-
istrations and administrators may be a locus of innovation by enabling experimen-
tation and risk taking (Shaw, 1997, cited in Pelling, 2011). Within these networks,
small groups of committed individuals can provide leadership and critical reflexivity
(Olsson, Folke and Berkes, 2004; Pelling et al., 2008, cited in O’Brien, 2012).

Building a tool-set for reflexive decision-making

Given the importance of reflexivity in enabling a deliberate approach to DRM for
the post-2015 agenda where resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation
are all viable responses to social-ecological stress, there is a need to develop tools that
can be employed to encourage this process. A good starting point for this would be
to recalibrate the existing tool-set towards a more reflexive process and reorganise
existing methods, which are at present a relatively ad-hoc assemblage of techniques
drawn from disparate fields. While some methods—such as cost-benefit analysis
(Harberger, 1978, 1984), participatory learning (Berkes, 2009), scenario analysis
(Moss et al., 2010), narrative storylines (Tschakert and Dietrich, 2010), simulations
(Nicholls et al., 2007), action research (List, 2005), multi-criteria decision-making
S14  David Matyas and Mark Pelling

(Birkmann, 2006) and adaptive co-management (Olsson, Folke and Berkes, 2004)
(among others)—show promise, they have yet to be systematically applied and
reviewed for the distinct challenges of reflexivity in the context of DRM. Least
developed are those tools that can build local capacity for reflexivity that matters—
approaches that combine risk analysis with entitlements and resourcing to make
changes to the local and not-so-local development structures that generate risk locally.
Furthermore, institutional structures rarely allow for learning (reflexivity) across
institutional levels and time frames (Keen et al., 2005, cited in Miller et al., 2010).
A more integrated reflexivity could potentially be facilitated through adjusted organi-
sational structures, working routines and training. Going forward, new tools may
be needed if critical reflexivity is to be encouraged in the DRM decision-making
process (Field et al., 2012), specifically tools to better consider tensions between exist-
ing imperatives (transparency and efficiency) and reflexive processes (social learning
and self-organisation).

Conclusion: competing futures

With resilience set to continue informing the discourse and practice of humanitar-
ian and development practitioners, funding agencies and academics post-2015, the
importance of critical engagement with the concept is manifest. While decidedly
useful in certain contexts, it is also necessary to explore the concept’s weaknesses.
Elaborating resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation as expressions of
a resilience approach, this paper has sought to disaggregate some of the internal con-
tradictions of resilience. It has introduced DRM perspectives and illustrated how
critical reflexivity as the enactment of a resilience approach can contribute to a richer
engagement with the trade-offs inherent in a closer relationship between development
and risk management. Perhaps most importantly, the paper has sought to present
resilience not as an abstract catch-all phrase, but as a term with its grounding in
reflexive decision-making and in consequence its own policy implications for learn-
ing and self-organisation. This opens scope for developing clear indicators of resil-
ience as a capacity (built on learning and self-organisation). This separates resilience
capacity from the trajectory of decision outcomes–resistance, incremental adjustment
and transformation. In so doing we offer a framework through which to refine the
use of resilience in post-2015 agreements without binding this to any preconceived
set of management preferences. In this understanding, resilience for DRM becomes
identified as a way of thinking of which the doing is an extension.
  Given the path dependency that decisions taken now will have on the future, criti-
cal reflection on contemporary vulnerabilities and candidness about the potential
impact of policies going forward are essential. Decision-makers will need to con-
sider alternative, deeper-rooted interventions that may engage in riskier policy choices
and challenge the trade-offs implicit in the multiple (and often-competing) goals of
DRM actors, agendas, resource allocation and system rules.
 Positioning resilience for 2015 S15

  Much work remains to be done to determine the thresholds of resistance, incre-

mental adjustment, and transformation, and the contexts and values in which one
approach may outweigh another. These trade-offs should not be denied or hidden
beneath a veneer of technical methodology and epistemological confusion, which
is a risk, given resilience’s current trajectory. Rather, in the build-up to 2015, now is
an opportunity to better define the development pressures that underlie disaster risk
and confront the associated challenges with a critically reflexive understanding of the
texture and appropriateness of varied pathways for change.

Acknowledgements
This paper is a product of the UK Government Office for Science Foresight project
on Reducing Risks of Future Disasters: Priorities for Decision Makers.

Correspondence
Professor Mark Pelling, Department of Geography, King’s College London, K7.52
King’s Building, Strand Campus, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom.
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7848 2462; e-mail: mark.pelling@kcl.ac.uk

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