Forget Resilience, Focus on Adaptation

As we look to the future, it is climate change that will drive much of what we do as emergency managers. The initial impacts are already being felt with the increase in violent weather systems that have brought huge amounts of rain to some portions of the United States and other parts of the world. On the opposite end of that spectrum we have drought and heat waves impacting people, systems and agriculture.

Then there is this for our partner country to the north, Canada not ready for climate change, report warns.

What I found very interesting at the end of the article was the call for establishing Chief Adaptation Officers. This runs counter to the current trend of governments establishing Chief Resilience Officers. I suppose you can say that adaptation is an inherent function of resilience. However, what I like about the title of Chief Adaptation Officer is that it is concrete. You know what that means. It has a specific focus on climate change adaptation and is not as amorphous as using the word "resilience" in a title. What the heck does that mean? And it can mean different things to different people. 

I doubt that Chief Adaptation Officer will catch on very quickly. It is not the norm and much more sexy to use the resilience title. What will be interesting is if people try to stick the title of adaptation or resilience as an additional hat on emergency management directors. It would be a "cheap way" to show interest in the topic without the commitment of more resources.

In my mind, the idea of a Chief Resilience/Adaptation Officer is to influence policy-level decisions and to have a higher level of interaction within a specific community or state. The emergency manager has other responsibilities that include running an agency as a leader and administrator. Instead, these positions should be part of an executive's cabinet or office where they can be more influential within government and the larger community.

The Recovery Diva shared the link above.