The Meaning of Sustainability - Assignment Example

Resilience Resilience is no new term in the world as it has been felt across several countries and organizations. When an organization is resilient, it shows that it can observe or buffer disturbances, self-organize and learn to adapt to the context of change to maintain core capabilities. The optimal goal of resilience is to ensure a disaster-free country, well-secured country, and a productive environment. Security organizations in the United States, the likes of Homeland Security have come up with several strategic plans for ensuring that resilience is incorporated into the community. Cases of terrorist attacks are being put as a story of the past with several methods to fight terrorism attacks being put in order. Moreover, disaster resilience is vitality. The federal government has been in the front hand, encouraging community resilience as a way to ensure a productive nation. A resilient nation is a prosperous nation. Resilient people, organizations, and even countries are blessed with such an outlook that they can change course and soldier on, even after misfortunes. Resilience Introduction Resilience is the will to recover from or adjust easily to misfortunes or change. Usually the affected becomes successful, strong or healthy after something bad happens. It’s always the goal of any country, organization or to bounce back to the normal state especially when hit by either calamities or economic downfalls. Measures have been put in place to ensure that these countries, organization or firms adopt resilience. Rather than making failure overcome them, they rise from their ashes and move forward. Sportsmen and women are advised to be resilient during training and competitions as in the end; it produces positive results. Resilience is quite different from resistance though the two share numerous similarities. Resilient people, organizations, and even countries are blessed with such an outlook that they can change course and soldier on, even after misfortunes. Discussion Resilience and resistance have quite some similarities and differences. Psychologists have identified that positive attitude and being optimistic makes one be resilient. The resilience theory clearly manifests the similarities and differences of the resilience theory. Resistance and resilience both have a positive result. During times of economic downfall in an organization, similarities of the two are clearly manifested by the organization’s or country’s ability to withstand and face the calamities (Greeff, 2005). The organization that resists calamities and economic downfall are a resilient organization and hence in either the short term or long term, it ends up reaping positive results from its resilience. In a case of sportsmen and women, they are advised to be resistant to climatic conditions of any given country which may end up affecting their performance sports wise. This is similar to their being resilient. Moreover, both resilience and resistance cause an ecosystem to remain relatively unchanged when confronted by disturbance such as low oxygen levels that lead to some organisms dying or temporarily shifting to a new environment (Deveson, 2003). Opposition to changes in environmental conditions boosts survival rates of these organisms leading to flourishing ecosystem. In addition to denunciation of ecosystem disturbance, resilience and resistance enhance a sustainable global environment because of the ability to resist changes in climatic condition like drought. However, resistance and resilience also face a number of differences with one of them being no internal reorganization and successional change being needed in a case of resistance, whilst in resilience; internally reorganization is more of a requirement, perhaps through mosaic of patches that are at different stages of reassembly. Resistance is more of an opposition to change whereas resilience tries to adapt to these changes to maintain core capabilities. Resistance and resilience can also be differentiated in form of disaster. Disaster resilience refers to being able to absorb impact of a disaster, maintain as much function as possible and make certain that failures occur in a controlled way. This permits as first as possible the establishment of normal or near-normal function. Disaster resistance, on the other hand, refers to the ability to oppose the onset and impact of the disaster. This will in return defeat the impact of the event. This hence highlights a great difference between resistance and resilience. There is a need to fight disaster and insecurity. As applied to social systems, resilience is the capacity of a community system or part of that system to recover from disruptive events. The Homeland’s strategic plan is to provide national and economic security, enforce and manage immigration laws and ensure a resilient community. A community is free from terrorism and cases of disaster. The strategic plan is being laid from the ground levels with the community systems being put in place. The major strategic plan of the Homeland Security is based on preventing terrorism and enhancing security. Counterterrorism’s responsibilities focus on ensuring that neither chemical weapons nor nuclear weapon enter the country. The United States has made advancements in curbing terrorism since the terrorist attack of 11th September 2001. This resilience has been brought by the fact that the threat is understood. Then information and intelligence is gathered, collected, analyzed and shared. Operations by the terrorists are then disrupted. Spread of extremist is then curbed. The second strategic plan for the Homeland Security is to prevent the unauthorized usage and entrance of chemical and nuclear weapons into the country. By being on the front line in curbing insecurity, Homeland Security has been in the front line to ensure that the US remains a CBRN-free nation. Moreover, Homeland Security has promoted the resilience through its never ending hunger to ensure a nation that is resilient to disasters (Tyler& Sigh, n.d). Through the improvement of individual and family capacity to reduce vulnerabilities and withstand disasters, disaster resilience has been boosted. Moreover, risks have been mitigated through the communities. Finally, national preparedness through a whole community approach has been very effective. However, not all these Homeland strategic plans have been effective in cases of insecurity still on the rise in the United States. A case of gunmen storming into schools and spraying bullets to pupils has been reported showing ineffectiveness in the Homeland strategic plans for ensuring a secure country. Moreover, cases of robbery are also on the rise 2014 recording a 9% rise in crime rate in the United States compared to 2013. Disaster management has also been a problem with several calamities of hurricanes being reported that have led to losing of lives (Kiltz, n.d). The Homeland’s mission is to prevent loss of lives, hence any report of loss of lives shows laxity in Homelands strategic plans. This is more so a failure to promote resilience. Hence, Homeland Security should come up with better ways of managing disasters and calamities. The September 11th attacks was one of the lowest times in the United States that caused death and demolition of infrastructure (Williams, 2003). Business came to a stand-still as the whole world was left in disbelief. This clearly showed that this terrorist attack had been well orchestrated as it got the United States security and defense team unawares. However, the terrorist attack of 2011 September was a great failure on their part. The terrorists took their time in planning on how to attack the country. The Homeland Security on its part didn’t have any prior information on the terrorists plan to bomb down the World Trade Center (WTC). In this case study, it is evident that community resilience was a great failure. This terrorist attack would have been prevented if the national security and defense team had detected the terrorism threat early in advance. This would have been made possible by gathering information, analyzing the intelligence information and cutting down any reported terrorist operations. However, due to laxity on their part and ignorance, the terrorist attack was made possible leading death of several innocent civilians and even causing disabilities to other people. The terrorist attack moreover shook the country’s economy with the United States recording a gradually economic growth during that time. This led to organizations like Homeland Securities to come up with some stringent ways of countering terrorism in the country. Cases of terrifying terrorist attack haven’t been witnessed greatly in the United States after that of September 2011. Conclusion Resilient people, organizations, and even countries are blessed with such an outlook that they can change course and soldier on, even after misfortunes. The Homeland Security has been pivotal in the enhancement of security in the United States because it has employed elements of the resilience framework of using community systems in its quest for secure environmental conditions. Homeland’s Security disaster resilience framework is made up of context that include social group followed by disturbance, then capacity to deal with a disturbance and finally the reaction to a disturbance. However, Homeland Security has witnessed a few failures in its part like repeated crime rates in the United States. All in all resilience of the organization and even countries has been of great importance. These organizations face the real taste of time, but they still rise from their ashes and move on with the course to achieve. References Kiltz, L. (n.d.). The Challenges Of Developing A Homeland Security Discipline To Meet Future Threats To The Homeland. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Deveson, A. (2003). Resilience. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Greeff, A. (2005). Resilience. Carmarthen: Crown House. Williams, M. (2003). The terrorist attack on America. San Diego: Greenhaven. Tyler, J., & Singh, A. (n.d.). Enhancing post-earthquake disaster resilience. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, 103-117. Read More