EDITORIAL: Falling off the Cliff Into the Rising Tides: Regaining Resilience

As we begin the first few months of the New Year, the uncertainties of debt crises worldwide and domestic fiscal policies curry favor in the news. However, we should be mindful that while these economic debates occur in the corridors of Washington, D.C., millions of residents in the Tri-State area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) are still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. While the immediate response period has ended, the long, slow road to recovery is just beginning for many of the region’s residents. No one is immune from disasters or their impacts. Although disasters are local events affecting people where they live and work, they often have regional and national ramifications. Disaster losses are escalating in both monetary and human terms (fatalities and injuries), putting pressure on local, state, and national budgets as billiondollar disasters become the norm rather than the exception. Disasters pose significant risk management challenges before, during, and after events such as Sandy, yet despite the scientific evidence to support the value of disaster risk reduction, the nation lacks a sustained commitment to it in policies and actions at all levels of government. Our present policies lack mechanisms for fostering and sustaining resilience, prioritizing short-term gains and interests over long-term investments for the future. Do we rebuild the devastated areas of the Jersey shore, Staten Island, and Long Island as they were, or do we try to make these communities more resilient in the long run with enhanced capacity to respond and recover to future events? Building resilience is a shared responsibility and requires a holistic perspective where individuals, organizations, the private sector, communities, cities, and government at all levels identify and accept their roles and responsibilities for becoming more resilient. Enhancing resilience to disasters is everyone’s job—it is not a partisan issue, or just the task of the private sector or government. It has now become a national imperative, given our current and future fiscal climate. As a nation we can no longer afford to reward communities for bad development decisions that increase disaster risk in the long run. But local communities must do their part. Individuals and community leaders must realize that they are their own first lines of defense against disasters, and the decisions they make about where to build (or rebuild), how much to invest in hazard mitigation, and what land use, zoning laws, and building codes to use will influence their ability to respond to and recover from future disasters. Enlightened leadership is key, but so too is the science in support of sound policy decisions. The use of science to advocate policy choices was the hallmark of Barry Commoner’s career. And he would be one of the first New York City voices to challenge post-Sandy reconstruction in high-hazard coastal areas in the region, given the scientific certainty of sea-level rise and the projected increase in the frequency and intensity of coastal storms. Building back bigger and better is not the answer; building back smarter may be. But recovery is more than just the buildings and infrastructure; it is the social connections and ambience of neighborhoods and communities. It is here where the challenges are the greatest and where policies need to address the tough questions of recovery for whom and recovery to what—questions that at present have not been adequately vocalized or addressed in recovery decision making. This issue highlights the science to policy nexus. The summary article on the National Research Council’s report on disaster resilience (Cutter et al.) and the separate commentaries provided by Claire Rubin and Tim O’Riordan highlight how improvements in disaster policy choices should be based in scientific understanding, but often are not. Similarly, Kull et al. provide a synthesis of sciencebased interventions for enhancing the resilience of rural landscapes, yet many of these have not been implemented. Finally, we pay homage to the founding father of Environment, Barry Commoner, with a personal preamble by Alan McGowan on Commoner’s career and a reprint of the infamous Baby Tooth study, a scientific endeavor that led to an important policy outcome, The Limited Test Ban Treaty. Making communities more disaster resilient is surely easier than negotiating such a milestone treaty, so why haven’t we done it? We understand the science to support resilience; but perhaps we are less sanguine about the politics and self-interests that mire decision making.