Original Research

Social resilience: the forgotten dimension of disaster risk reduction

Guy Sapirstein
Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies | Vol 1, No 1 | a8 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/jamba.v1i1.8 | © 2006 Guy Sapirstein | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 25 April 2006 | Published: 25 April 2006

About the author(s)

Guy Sapirstein, A senior partner with Organizational Resilience International, LLC in Boston, Massachusetts, USA., United States

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Abstract

The current thinking in the Disaster Risk Reduction field emphasizes assessment and reduction of vulnerability and especially social vulnerability as an important factor in mitigating the effects of disasters. In the process of emphasizing vulnerability, the role and complexity of social resilience was somewhat lost and at times minimized. For example, Terry Cannon and his colleagues include resilience as a factor of social vulnerability in a report to United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) (Cannon, Twigg and Rowell, 2002). The United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) delineates “Social Vulnerability” and “Individual Vulnerability” as working areas, but does not mention Social or Individual Resilience (Bogardi, 2006).

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