“ Putting Resilience at the Heart of Development’’

governance structures were better prepared and had more coherent response strategies. Self-help efforts by communities played vital roles in saving more lives than any external intervention could have done. The society took far less time to self-organize and recover.

Resilience is also about being able to face adversity without losing the ability to function as a society.

In 2004, the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh, Indonesia causing four per cent of the total population of around four million to lose their lives. In 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami of similar magnitude struck Japan, the number of lives lost in the most affected prefectures was a tenth of the number lost in Aceh in an area over twice the size. Japan in the face of disaster retained, to a large extent, its institutions and organizational structure, whereas in Aceh it has disrupted all vital functions of society. When a powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Aceh this January there were no casualties thanks to an effective government-led publicity campaign and UNDP sponsored disaster preparedness training.

Japan and Mozambique each exhibited resilience in the face of these shocks, in these cases natural disasters, but other shocks, from political conflict to economic, food, or energy crises, can also disrupt people's livelihoods and have a harsh impact on households and communities.

Building Resilience In building resilience, the first priority must be prevention, complemented by explicit efforts to reduce societal vulnerabilities and a commitment to maintain the integrity of communities, institutions, and ecosystems. These are the very foundations of resilience.

Building resilience benefits from governance which is active, effective, honest, and fair, and not just in developing countries. As the recent financial crisis showed, not all developed countries have retained systemic resilience to economic shocks. Unless developed countries are prepared to see years of human development and progress wiped away when adversity strikes, their systemic resilience to shocks is critical as well.

Institutions - particularly structures and systems of governance - provide frameworks for building resilience. When state institutions fail to guarantee access to justice and a functioning public service, and cannot provide an enabling environment in which people can flourish, communities become more vulnerable to the criminal or other violent entities which will fill any void.

State fragility is a function of not only weak institutions but also of social systems under strain.

A resilient state is anchored in a cohesive society. Stark inequalities and inequities undermine that.

The course of the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya presented a classic piece of evidence for the importance of building resilience based on social cohesion. Communities where there was greater cohesion across ethnic groups experienced far less violence than did those without it.