Resilience – why is this important?

Developing sustainable methods of both behavioural and infrastructural resilience to climate-related disaster events is crucial for the long-term wellbeing of township communities. Residents of these settlements often convey that the immediate demands of daily life are all-encompassing, making it a struggle to access the time and resources to allocate towards preventative strategizing. As well as being subsidiary to immediate demands, such efforts are often regarded as futile due to the lack of investment and resources available. Changing this situation and corresponding attitude is increasingly critical as climate-induced disaster events feed and re-inforce cycles of development challenges. In turn, this has created social environments of desperation, destitution, and violence that further hinder townships in dealing with development issues. Developing sustainable resilience strategies to address climate-related disasters in township settlements is thus an immediate necessity.