Building Resilience to Social Vulnerability

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Building Resilience to Social Vulnerability

• A SIDS Perspective

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Objectives of presentation

• Build consensus on theoretical underpinnings of
  social vulnerability
• Examine linkages between economic, social and
  environmental vulnerability
• Review status of work on social vulnerability
• Agree on actions that can help build resilience
  to social vulnerability.

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Theoretical underpinnings

• Vulnerability refers to proneness to damage from
  external forces
• Economic vulnerability refers to risks faced from
  exogenous shocks to systems of production,
  distribution and consumption
• Environmental Vulnerability refers to risk of
  damage to natural eco-systems

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Social Vulnerability

• Social vulnerability reflects the degree to
  which societies or socio-economic groups are
  affected by stresses and hazards, whether brought
  about by external forces or intrinsic factors
  internal and external that negatively impacts
  the social cohesion of a country (UNDP 2000).

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Theoretical Underpinnings contd

• Definition useful because it
• Establishes the link between the economy and the
  society
• Stresses that hazards can be external/ internal
  avoidable/unavoidable
• Calls for a determination of the factors which
  promote cohesion and/or disunity
• suggests that even those actions that seek to
  build resilience, can also have an opposite
  effect.

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Features of Social Vulnerability in SIDS

• High rates of unemployment/under-employment
• High dependency ratios
• High poverty rates (absolute, endemic and
  relative 5-60)
• Marginalisation of women, children and the
  elderly
• Dilution of local culture and values and their
  replacement with foreign cultures and values
• Increased levels of crime/drug addiction

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Features of social vulnerability contd

• Increased consumption rates due to growing
  populations
• dispersed rural settlements with implications for
  cost of service provision
• Small populations but high population densities
  in urban/peri-urban/ coastal/valley areas with
  implications for health and sanitation
• Undeveloped social sectors
• Susceptibility to brain drain
• Susceptibility to infectious diseases

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Features of social vulnerability contd

• Vulnerability to extreme natural and man-made
  disasters and energy shocks
• High unit costs of health, administrative
  education, judicial services
• High transportation costs (inter and intra
  island)
• High rates of internal (rural to urban) and
  international migration
• Low levels of educational achievement/high
  dropout rates and illiteracy.

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Features of Social vulnerability contd

• Insecure food situation/high food import bill
  with negative dietary/health implications
• Poor access to land/ links to food insecurity
• Aging populations with implications for viability
  of social security/ health service delivery
  systems and transmission of values
• Thinness of the insurance market

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Features of social vulnerability

• Underdeveloped public and private sectors
• Low institutional capacity due limited HR
  capacity
• Weak development planning capacity
• Lack of integration between economic, social and
  environmental aspects of planning
• Lack of integration between the national and
  regional aspects of planning
• Lack of participation in the planning and
  decision-making process
• Lack of effective decision-support systems

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Imperatives for building resilience

• Strengthening development policy analysis,
  formulation and implementation arrangements
• Develop institutional and technical capacity to
  formulate and implement trade policy
• Strengthening channels for continuous
  participation in policy and planning processes

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Imperatives for Building Resilience

• Establish IDP arrangements that
• Reflect a common set of guiding principles
• Allow for incorporation of physical and/or social
  impacts of economic activities or for
  environmental protection measures
• Routinely incorporates environmental, social,
  physical and spatial consequences of planning

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Imperatives for Building Resilience contd

• Develop the capacity of key national and regional
  institutions
• Increase the supply, use and retention of trained
  human resources
• Institutionalize dynamic planning and
  decision-making frameworks based on participatory
  processes
• More participation by CSOs in dev. process

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Building Resilience (contd)

• Generate sustained and comprehensive labour
  market information to better guide interventions
  in the labour market
• Reform education systems to ensure better fit
  between trained HR and national/regional
  development goals
• Enhance labour market flexibility to meet
  productivity/competitiveness targets

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Building Resilience (contd)

• Develop an approved social policy framework based
  on
• - a clear understanding of how individuals or
  families react to risk
• - levels of risk, incomes and prices or costs of
  risk management
• Promote the advantages of a disciplined,
  organised and comprehensive approach to managing
  risk
• Increase allocation directed at improving social
  capital

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Building Resilience

• Develop national and sub-regional policy
  frameworks for poverty eradication using the
  sustainable livelihood approach
• Provide social safety nets for the poor
• Undertake macro-economic and social analyses of
  social development programmes
• Enhance human and physical infrastructure

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Building Resilience contd

• Promote conflict resolution at h/hold, and
  community and national level
• Empower marginalised groups
• Ensure the livelihoods and income security of
  older persons
• Build leadership capacity at community level
• Better management of the expectations of the
  population

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Building Resilience contd

• Facilitate the development of an internal
  entrepreneurial culture
• Create an environment conducive to local and
  foreign investment
• THANK YOU!!!