EU pledges further work on climate ‘resilience’

EurActiv: The EU commissioners dealing with development cooperation and humanitarian aid have pledged more work on “resilience”, defined as the ability of individuals and communities to recover from shocks and stresses. The idea has become more prominent in development discussions in Brussels, as policymakers have searched for ways to mitigate the expected effects of climate change.

Many of the world’s most vulnerable people have been buffered or seen their livelihoods destroyed by extreme weather events, such a typhoon in the Philippines last year, Haiyan, and severe flooding in Bangladesh.

Kristalina Georgieva, the commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis response, said at the EU’s first forum on resilience, on Monday (28 April), that the concept was “nothing new”, as it referred to “coping mechanisms people have to create themselves”.

The commissioner said that while the worst of the crisis received considerable media attention, the “success of resilience” was “a difficult story to tell”. She added that people in Bangladesh had switched from chickens to rearing ducks, as a way to cope with the floods....

European flag outside EC headquarters, shot by Xavier Häpe, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license