Designing communities for challenging times
As I’m learning more and more about the overarching topic of climate adaptation, it becomes evident that communities are and will play a crucial role in successfully adapting to the consequences of climate change.
Why? Because there won’t be enough resources to cope with the rising frequency and scale of extreme weather events.
Looking at the past, we see that extreme weather events have skyrocketed fivefold over the past 50 years. The good news: deaths from weather disasters have decreased threefold between 1970 and 2019, but economic damage has increased sevenfold. (World Meteorological Organisation (source).
Looking at the future, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) estimates that by 2030 extreme weather events will increase by 40% (source).
What does it mean? Organisations that support communities in dealing with those events will see increased demands and requests for resources. Resources that won’t be enough. The need to equip communities to help themselves is a common theme in podcasts and interviews with emergency managers.
The inspiring story of Christine
Communities have always played an influential role, especially during adversity. Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez shares her experience of the power of community during Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Together with her cousin and the pets, they hid in a tiny bathroom for hours. When they stepped out, their world changed. Trees were sticks, stripped naked by the storm, the ground covered with debris, and total silence.
Displaced and struggling to understand what had happened, they started first to try to survive by themselves. There was no communication, no water, no food, and no ATMs. Her smartphone was useless.
On day four, she wrote in her diary: ”We decided we need to open up a kitchen.” They had no food or water, but she realised that her neighbours had become her family. She could ask others for help. They asked a local association to use their facilities and invited others to cook, paint signs, and clean. Within a few days, they launched Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual aid project), and by day ten, they fed hundreds of people. Six months passed until they got water service back, and nine before they had power. Together with others, they organised a community kitchen, solar laundromats and ways to source water or energy sustainably. Through the process of doing, they were able to heal instead of despair, as she describes it. The community showed them that they could build a different and better Puerto Rico.
Their vision now is to share what they learned. They want to equip other so-called marginalised communities to respond when all infrastructure collapses. They want to help find alternative ways of preparing and surviving extreme weather events. Because it turns out that community is a critical infrastructure that needs rebuilding to face the challenging times ahead.
Community is a critical infrastructure that needs rebuilding to face the challenging times ahead.
The privileged Global North must learn from the stories of communities that literally weathered storms and grew stronger. Forward-thinking governments and non-profits should tap into the power of design and co-creation to foster local communities. We should equip them to play a significant role in times of disruption and help take pressure off a strained support system.
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If you are curious to learn more about the story of Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez, I can recommend her TED Talk or read more in this article.
