ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the puzzling case of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). It leads to an overview on the global advocacy of DRR and its worldview of resilience. Attention then shifts to local understandings of resilience in the Pacific and in the Caribbean regions. The chapter introduces a normative argument anchored in a personalist ethics on resilience. Limited finances are also related to how decisions are made and which policy areas are prioritised in relation to disaster resilience capacities at the national and sub-national level. This emphasises the neglected question of power between different scales of resilience. The spread of knowledge on ‘how to be resilient’ not only requires social capital, but also the ability to learn and reflect, which is often mentioned as an important aspect of community resilience. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
