What are Sustainability and Resilience?
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The Cadarn Scheme is concerned with both Sustainability and Resilience. But what are these, and why do they matter?
Sustainability
The word sustainability comes from Latin. Since the 1980s, people have been using the word sustainability to mean human sustainability on planet Earth. The UN Brundtland Commission defines sustainability as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This means we need to think about effects of human activity on all parts of our societies: environmental, social and economic. (More information: http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/what/index.htm)
Resilience
Resilience is the ability of a system to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of unforeseen changes, or even catastrophic incidents. All kinds of complex ‘systems’ have to be resilient, from companies to cities to whole ecosystems. These systems constantly change as they grow, go through crises and renewal. A resilient system can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. It is about how structures cope with challenges and change.
For us in our communities, resilience is about how well we will be able to cope with the challenges and problems brought about by climate change and the fact that we are running out of cheap fossil fuels.(This is often called the problem of Peak Oil). It is likely that without so much cheap fuel we will have to change the way that we move ourselves and our goods and services around. We will have to grow more of our own food, and make more of our own products closer to home rather than having them shipped or flown in from abroad. Our changing climate also means that we will most likely have to cope with different weather patterns. These will affect the crops that we will be able to grow here; those living in coastal areas may have to move away from the water as flooding and land-loss will affect lifestyles.
As such, a resilient Welsh community is a community equipped to face the challenges of the future. It is able to produce much of its own food, goods and services locally, and withstand extreme weather events that may affect both inland and coastal areas. This type of community has strong and varied economies made up of many local independent businesses and traders, and has healthy, active and well-educated societies that are able to take informed decisions about the way to lead their own communities.