ABSTRACT
Sustainable development is a conservation, mitigation and restoration paradigm, and has been the dominant approach to community development since at least 1987 when it was introduced by the UN's World Commission for Economic Development. Almost two decades ago, Graham Tobin referred to the integration of community sustainability and community resilience as the "holy grail" for natural hazards planning. In his conceptualization, sustainability was equated to a "mitigation" approach that sought to prevent natural disasters by reducing exposure, risk and vulnerability across the community. Numerous authors have attempted to define the relationship between sustainability and resilience. The result is that almost every possible configuration between the two concepts has been proposed. Some view resilience as being the same as sustainability, but with a systems science perspective. Resilience policies and practices were much stronger in the natural disaster communities, mostly in the areas of economic development and formal community education.
