Survival Depends on Community Resilience
Sharing knowledge at community level is vital to our survival.
Did Yoda do Yoga?
LM inspired this story By her response to my questions about Yoga So many things I didn’t know, Did Yoda do Yoga?
Whimsical mood, Unfortunately mind started thinking, Whimsy disappeared in cloud of questions made worse by having coffee.
Comfortable in favourite chair within apartment nine floors up deep in concrete landscape, Realised have deep knowledge confined largely to IT technology, LM’s yoga story highlighted my shortcomings, Mind saturated with coffee proposed the whimsical question: Did Yoda do Yoga?
Two concepts completely alien to each other with absolutely nothing in common, First thought question non-sensical, Thought about it, Drank more coffee, Suppose I treat Yoda and Yoga as metaphors for communities, Communities unable or unwilling to share their knowledge, Another coffee, Question concerns knowledge gaps, Mind has habit of jumping around so new question: How do knowledge gaps critically affect community’s ability to survive climate change?
Knowledge Gaps
Communities are repositories of local lived-in knowledge, Inuit community experts living in artic environment, Contrast with farming communities where growing and harvesting knowledge is paramount especially water management, Urban communities largely depend upon technology they don’t understand and have no control over.
Rural communities even beside each other develop special knowledge to cope with and thrive in their own unique micro-climates.
Traditionally it made sense to centralise expensive resources for sharing between communities like combine harvesters bee hives on trucks fire-fighters and more recently water-bombers, All this combined with centralised knowledge management, Planning and response co-ordination control.
Traditional methods worked well for localised short term emergencies, Move resources from extinguished fire to fight another fire, End of fire season refurbish and lend equipment to other jurisdictions, California and Australia help each other share water bombers and specialist fire fighters.
Now thanks to climate change traditional thinking showing short comings, Fire seasons overlap with multiple large wild fires simultaneously ravaging countryside, Centralised resources co-ordination and relief measures overwhelmed, Recent Eastern Australia flood emergencies, Communities left to fend for themselves, Lacking local weather information rain and river levels, Greatly delayed and often mis-directed rescue responses, Locals pitched-in rescuing people using tinnies, Many lives put at risk!
Predictions concerning climate impacts once dismissed now coming true with a vengeance, What can we do?
Improve Community Resilience.
Disaster management starting to pay attention to impacts of climate change, Now decentralising and duplicating resources to local regional centres, Enabling simultaneous deployment of life saving resources, Knowledge sharing between regional communities ensures appropriate measures put in place to suit local community needs.
At least that’s the plan, But so much else to do, Uninsurable housing means communities dependent upon government assistance to finance rebuilding or relocate above flood zones if land available, Government seems unable to provide timely assistance, All this acerbated by 1 in 100 year events becoming annual disasters, Time is short, Worse to come.
Teach Yoga to Yoda
Back to whimsical silly question, Have to start addressing impossible questions, Consider that urban populations are vulnerable to climate change, Urban communities completely dependent upon regional resources, Food water power and fuel, When resources are compromised by extreme events what can urban communities do?
Blessed be.
