Measuring resilience capacity for transformational adaptation across the world

In the context of increasing measured climate-related risks and observed impacts across the globe, the need for transformative adaptation is seeing heightened attention, which implies consideration shifts from conventional, response-and incremental-focussed approaches for addressing climate-related risks towards transformative approaches to prevent existential impacts associated with climate-related disasters and enable sustainable futures.  

Yet, little reported success with observed adaptation exists and little is now about the capacity of communities to implement transformation. In this study we use a most widely used and validated resilience measurement tool to estimate capacity for transformation resilience across the globe. 

We do so by applying the systematic resilience measurement framework developed by the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities tool to examine the potential for transformational resilience as compared to absorptive and adaptive resilience.  

For this research we utilize the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) framework in order to evaluate absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities as key enablers of resilience. The FRMC tool comprises 44 discrete sources of resilience, which are indicators that are measured during normal (non-flood) and post-flood times via household surveys, community group discussions, focus group discussions with stakeholders that are part of the Flood Resilience Alliance, key informant interviews, and existing secondary data sources. This study encompass 22 countries and 325 communities. The analysis focuses on absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities and examines how these capacities evolve over time in response to changes in environmental, social, and economic conditions. We further measure their changes across two distinct time periods. While absorptive capacities focus on coping with and recovering from shocks, adaptive capacities enable incremental adjustments to manage evolving risks. Transformative capacity, essential for addressing intolerable risks and driving systemic change. 

We overall find absorptive and adaptive resilience capacities to dominate the results, but in a number of vulnerable communities we identify solid levels of transformative capacity. We suggest further efforts ought to be expanded on bolstering the transformative capacity, where it exists, of communities in order to better brace those for further increases in the severity of climate-related  risks.