Resilience Blueprint
This section provides an overview of Resilience as a concept. It also introduces the five Resilience Blueprint pillars, or “system environments,” which reflect different realms of resilience.
These pillars link local and regional priorities with state, national and international directions for resilience, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. Each pillar has themes under which sit strategies that you can use to align your own resilience-building actions along with tools and case studies to help you
Our Statement of Resilience
Adapting to a Changing World
Who Has a Role in Resilience
Control vs Influence
Resilience Policy Context
Interpreting our Resilience Directions
Our Statement of Resilience
Disaster risk reduction is a challenge we all need to embrace. Being climate-ready in South East NSW means we are aware of the risks we face now and into the future, and are committed to proactive and flexible change management. This allows us to adapt to both rapid and slow onset shifts in ways that consider the dynamics of our communities.
We maintain an awareness that nothing is fixed. The environment we live in, our communities, economic conditions, built form and infrastructure are constantly evolving. And so too must be our approaches to our ongoing resilience.
How stress factors or natural hazard events will impact us will change as our circumstances change over time. This is because of the systemic and interconnected nature of the world we live in, and hence the need for our focus on systemic risk and systems-based resilience. This allows us to have a mind to the cumulative and cascading risks that require our attention, just as much as any single immediate event.
We have spent enough time, effort and emotional toil recovering from events to know the value of a proactive and forward focus.
We also know the pain of recovery as a process, and we know that ‘recovery’ is often just a word. Sometimes we can’t recover what has been lost. Resilience shouldn’t be about how we stand up to impacts and loss. It should be about the many and varied opportunities we seek everyday to avoid and mitigate future loss.
This is why, across South East NSW, we are making a commitment to drive resilience change.
We commit to taking action to build upon this Blueprint and embed resilience processes in everything we do, from government activities through to business processes, natural resource management and across communities and households. We all have a stake.
We will adapt our resilience approaches as things change. Driving resilience change means we are shaping a new reality for ourselves and as we evolve, and our circumstances change, so too we will ensure we adjust our resilience habits to keep pace.
Resilience is not static and doesn’t necessarily come naturally. We have to work at it. We will do this collaboratively, strengthening our connections with each other, the landscape and the climate we live in and their respective processes. We will identify and leverage opportunities for step change.
Together, we are investing in a more resilient tomorrow.
Adapting to a Changing World
What we have experienced has been life changing. From persistent drought, record breaking heatwaves, Black Summer Fires, hailstorms, COVID 19 and devastating floods, we are living in dynamic times. The future is uncertain yet one thing that is certain is our ability to change it for the better.
The stakes will continue to rise without collective, proactive effort to embed resilience in everything we do. In addition to risk to people and homes, in economic terms the projected costs of disasters over the next forty years is unsustainable. We need to break the cycle of reactive response and recovery, and inject more focus and investment into those things that will stand us in better stead the next time we are tested.
But what are those things?
The South East New South Wales (NSW) Resilience Blueprint helps us to identify and navigate how we can embed resilience thinking into our processes and decisions, giving us more control over our future.
We all have a role to play, as individuals and households, governments, non-government organisations, businesses – we all have our own processes and decisions we need to make.
The South East NSW Resilience Blueprint provides the architecture to create change for a more resilient and climate-ready future. It is both the map for how we get there, and the process of the people of our region coming together for the journey
It all changed with urgent knocking on doors – ‘are you ready?’ we asked our neighbours. We were facing fires like we had never experienced before. Only some of us were ready to act, knew the risks, what we needed to do and what help was available. Too many of us were unprepared. Many of those with plans based on past experiences found their plans outdated as these fires were acting in ways we never saw before. The fires brought so much loss to our community. We need better ways of doing things so we are all ready next time there is a knock at the door. - Bega Valley resident
Who Has a Role in Resilience
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
Resilience is the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management” (UNDRR, 2022).
Resilience is influenced by many aspects of government policy and legislation that address matters such as emergency management, infrastructure provision, health and safety, and environmental protection.
Statutory functions of government form only one part of what it takes to be resilient. This is because a person, community or place is not resilient just because there are
jurisdictional roles and responsibilities in place.
Government cannot ‘make’ people or place become resilient, nor is there a statutory function of government for every aspect of resilience. This is because resilience, disaster risk reduction, adaptation and preparedness are not the single responsibility of any one entity or group. They are shared responsibilities across government, individuals, communities, businesses and organisations. Sharing responsibility can mean that each entity or sector is responsible for certain outcomes or performing certain roles.
But government can enable and partner with others to:
- Support people and communities, organisations and businesses to understand their risks and responsibilities, and develop resilient behaviours and practices to anticipate, withstand, and thrive despite stresses and shocks
- Provide confidence to the community it is making risk-informed decisions across its responsibilities, to limit risk increases and actively mitigate existing and emerging stresses and shocks.
Building resilience in people, community and place therefore relies on partnerships, where all sectors actively identify opportunities to ‘lean into’ the spaces between statutory roles – the space of ‘moral obligation’.
Actively identifying these spaces where multiple entities can contribute to the outcome is a collective ownership, a moral obligation to help each other and shoulder more if the circumstance requires it. Sharing responsibility, but also collectively owning the gaps between those responsibilities creates the ‘mesh’ that builds cohesive and resilient communities and places.
The Resilient Blueprint encourages and prioritises collective impact over self-interest.
It is only through collectively addressing our challenges will we advance on our journey towards resilience.
Roles and Responsibilities in Resilience
Adapting to a changing world and progressing along our resilience journey requires different things from different groups and often, as individuals, we may form part of more than one group. This adds to the tapestry of how we each understand and interpret what it takes to be resilient, where we can view the same issue through multiple viewpoints.
Whilst everyone has a role, the scale of the role varies, and involves different things from different groups.
People and Communities
The journey of resilience starts with the individual. A community or place cannot be resilient without resilient people. In being resilient, an individual’s role is to strive to embody:
Individuals and households anticipate and respond to various stresses and shocks each day, whether it be a stressful work environment, a suddenly sick family member, or significant financial challenges. The skills you need to thrive despite those circumstances are the same skills you need to thrive despite natural hazard stresses and shocks.
People come together as ‘communities of place’ or ‘communities of interest’. Communities of place are formed by virtue of being part of the same suburb, district or town. Connections develop in these communities through family relationships, generational ownership of land, and a desire to live and prosper in a specific area with specific circumstances, values or landscape characteristics.
Communities of interest come together because of common interests or needs, like sporting groups, progress associations or societies. Bonds between people can be strong in these types of communities, as people generally choose to come together based on those commonalities.
Either way, the role of a community is to support each other, while each community member has a responsibility to each other. A resilient community ‘fills gaps’ that emerge during times of stresses and shocks, whether it be sharing accurate hazard information, to helping each other (particularly vulnerable persons) to prepare or evacuate, or to supporting short and long term recovery activities. As government can only do such much, a community that actively identifies and fills any gaps that emerge will ultimately emerge stronger and more cohesive, and therefore more resilience.
Organisations, Services and Businesses
Organisations, services and businesses have an often understated but critical role to play in the resilience of communities and places. They provide the economic underpinning for people’s socio-economic prosperity – a resilient place has a resilient economy.
Often the resilience of these entities can be summed up as simply business continuity planning and pre-event preparations, but a truly resilient business or organisation is much more than that.
A resilient business understands that stresses and shocks can represent critical risk factors to the viability of the business. It identifies these stresses and shocks at the enterprise level, not just the continuity level, and anticipates these so the business does no suffer substantial loss or bankruptcy when they occur.
Local Government
As the level of government closest to community, local government wears many hats. It has a wide range of statutory service delivery obligations, it acts as a voice for the community to higher levels of government, makes urban growth and land use planning decisions, maintains and enhances physical and community infrastructure, is responsible for the local dimensions of emergency management, and otherwise provides a wide range of services to support its community.
It can also provide many other community-servicing functions that ‘fall through the cracks’ of state and federal agency service delivery models to ensure its community is properly supported, even though there may be no statutory requirement to do so.
This is particularly the case with resilience.
Local government is also the level of government with the least resources to perform the functions it is required or requested to provide. Councils have statutory responsibilities for prudent financial management and are subject to stringent reporting under the Integrated Planning and Reporting (IP&R) Framework. Councils must be careful how and where it allocates its limited resources.
In addition to its statutory and non-statutory responsibilities, Councils also have a role in identifying and advocating for projects and activities that are needed in local areas to build resilience and mitigate existing and emergent risks. They also must actively utilise existing governance arrangements, such as the emergency management arrangements, to identify risks and issues that it cannot manage on its own, and transfer these risk / issues to higher levels of government to address.
State Government
The State government has a strong supporting role to play in advancing resilience locally, both in strengthening communities and places prior to events and providing resources and support during and following such events.
This is achieved in three ways:
- Actively undertaking its identified and assigned emergency management responsibilities as per local and district level emergency management plans and the State Emergency Management Plan (EMPLAN).
- Maximising delivery of practical support through provision of funding, resourcing and technical assistance to local government and community-level organisations to perform the functions these entities are statutorily required or morally obligated to perform.
Ensuring government activities and services, such as provision of transport, health, urban development, administration, and the like do not inadvertently increase risk or increase vulnerability into local systems.
Commonwealth Government
The Commonwealth government is responsible for national leadership on adaptation, managing Australian Government assets and services including significant investments in public infrastructure, and providing national climate science and information. It maintains a strong, flexible economy and well-targeted safety net to ensure that climate change does not disproportionately affect vulnerable groups.
‘CONTROL’ VERSUS ‘INFLUENCE’
In our varied roles that contribute towards enhancing resilience, some things may be in our direct ‘control’, and others we might not control but we can ‘influence’. For example, as an individual or as a household we can control whether we prepare our whether our neighbours have a plan, but we can help to influence them but discussing our plan with them and asking what their plan involves. We can also actively ‘advocate’, which is a public expression of support for an idea, need or position. The control versus influence contrast exists across all aspects of resilience and we must remember that whilst we might not have direct control of something, does not mean we are not part of the solution.
Control vs Influence
Purpose
Communities and councils impacted by fires and other disasters across South East NSW acknowledge the need to do things differently in response to rapidly evolving land uses and climate change. We need new ways of working together in partnership to undertake the necessary actions required to prepare for and prevent the impacts of disasters and to recover and rebuild in more resilient ways.
The South East NSW Resilience Blueprint facilitates councils and communities across South East NSW to better prevent, prepare, respond and recover from future disastersnand challenges. The vision is for individuals, families, communities and organisations to confidently navigate a changing world.
The Blueprint is a partnership between councils, community, business, organisations, emergency services and state and federal government agencies to embed resilience in decision making. The range and scale of disasters, stress factors and changes to our climate mean we need new partnerships between government and community, with clear roles and responsibilities for prevention and preparedness.
Blueprint Objectives
The objectives of the Resilience Blueprint are to ensure that resilience principles are incorporated and continuously improved upon as part of everything we do. This is achieved through:
For People and Communities:
- a greater understanding of risk
- recognising lessons learned as opportunities to grow resilience
- empowering people and communities to have a role
- harnessing local solutions to local issues.
For Governance Processes:
- establishing evidence in the context of community values and commitments,
and available funds and resources - ensuring decision-making processes and priorities are informed by risk-based
evidence - adopting coordinated and collaborative approaches
- adaptive governance that flexes with changed circumstances
- identifying prioritised activities to direct funding to need.
A Snapshot Overview
The Blueprint maps the forward resilience journey for South East NSW. It comprises:
- five ‘system environments’ which include people, community and culture, the natural environment, building environment and infrastructure, the economy and leadership and strategy
- each system environment is underpinned by a series of resilience themes prioritised by people from across South East NSW
- each of the 15 themes are supplemented by a framework of resilience directions that comprise:
- 30 priorities
- 168 strategies
- indicator metrics.
- supporting the system environments, themes and directions are the breadth of stakeholder groups, each with a different role in enhancing resilience
- across all system environments are processes of embedding, monitoring and evaluation and integration of resilience concepts across the PPRR spectrum of activities led by different stakeholder organisations.
System Environments
The five resilience system environments reflect different realms of resilience.
This approach allows us to contemplate the resilience priorities relating to different system environments, which can help to ‘break down’ the exact contributions to resilience-building efforts that are required, and who might best lead them.
The interconnections between system environment are significant, they cannot be siloed or considered in isolation of other system environments.
These system environments link local and regional resilience priorities with state, national and international directions for resilience, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. This includes pillars identified by the NSW Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and the National Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Resilience Policy Context
The Resilience Blueprint integrates and aligns with a series of local, state-wide, national and international frameworks, plans and strategies that focus on emergency management, disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and climate adaptation.
Figure 3 – The relationship of the South East NSW Resilience Blueprint to the broader policy and strategic landscape
The Resilience Blueprint will integrate into local government Integrated Planning and Reporting (IP&R) Framework documents, embedded as a core element of local government operational activities.
It provides opportunities to influence the future iteration of regional-level strategic plans, as a key locally-led by regional-scale input which contributes to enhanced resilience outcomes for South East NSW.
This adds additional dimensions to the spectrum of resilience embedding opportunities.
A further element of the policy and strategic context to which the Resilience Blueprint relates are the findings and recommendations of the many Commissions, Inquiries and Reviews conducted into disaster events and arrangements at the state and national level, including the 2022 NSW Flood Inquiry, the Select Committee on the Response to Major Flooding across NSW in 2022 report, and the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements and the 2020 NSW Bushfire Inquiry which followed the devastating Black Summer bushfires with significant policy, practice and operational observations relevant from a resilience perspective.
Directions Framework and Resilience Priorities
One of the key elements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is about better understanding the risks we face. By contemplating our risks, we are better equipped to develop plans for how we can address key risk and resilience issues to avoid or mitigate certain impacts, thereby lessening our exposure or vulnerability to them, over time.
The Resilience Blueprint includes five resilience ‘system environments’ which reflect different realms of resilience. This approach allows us to contemplate the resilience priorities relating to different system environments, which can help to ‘break down’ the exact contributions to resilience-building efforts that are required, and who might best lead them. The interconnections between each are significant, they cannot be siloed or considered in isolation of other system environments.
These system environments link local and regional resilience priorities with state, national and international directions for resilience, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.
These priorities and their associated strategies have been directly informed by governments, community groups, businesses, knowledge specialists, researchers and over 2,000 Resilience Blueprint participants from across South East NSW,
The Resilience Blueprint and its priorities are opportunities that can be explored and taken forward by those with a role in contributing to resilience to embed its consideration as part of day-to-day processes, across everything we do. Different stakeholders can use the resilience directions that follow to filter those that are relevant to our own circumstance and needs.
The following systems environments and resilience priorities map the forward resilience journey for South East NSW.
Interpreting Our Resilience Directions
A Quick Guide
The system environments that support the Resilience Blueprint are underpinned by a series of directions which help us to navigate our particular resilience need, depending on our role – as an individual, community group, service agency or organisation, a private sector business or government.
To navigate the resilience directions for each system environment:
THEMES – our resilience themes are overarching interests derive directly from stakeholder participation to inform the Resilience Blueprint. Over 2,000 stakeholders were involved.
EXAMPLE APPROACHES – resilience has long been in action across the region. Here we highlight some examples of activities which demonstrate the intent of the resilience themes.
TOOLS FOR SUPPORT – whether we want to boost our resilience as a household or contribute to resilience outcomes as a service organisation, there is a broad suite of tools available to help us on our own resilience journey, and build our awareness.
PRIORITIES – our priorities outline the resilience aspirations we seek to achieve. These may change over time as a result of continuous improvement. This means that we can continue to consider new opportunities and fill emergency gaps as they arise.
STRATEGIES – our resilience strategies detail the approaches we can consider in order to address our priorities. It is important to remember that many strategies will involve multiple partners and enablers, everyone has a role.
INDICATOR METRICS – these feature both quantitative and qualitative metrics that help us measure and interpret elements of resilience maturation over time. Not all aspects of resilience can be measured in number terms and so it is important for us to look deeper.
