Abstract
Natural hazards and their management are a part of everyday life in New Zealand. The country’s geography and climate places the nation at risk from a wide range of adverse events, and as a consequence, New Zealand has a strong focus on building resilience. From global to national to local levels of governance and decision making, resilience thinking is becoming institutionalised in the public and private domains. However, the operationalisation of the concept is contested in the literature, with its transition from theory to policy and practice leaving significant questions unanswered. The North Canterbury agricultural district of the Hurunui in New Zealand has experienced three distinct adverse events over the past decade - drought, earthquake and a biosecurity outbreak (Mycoplasma Bovis). This thesis critically evaluates how the institutional responses to these three adverse events has affected the social resilience of farmers in the Hurunui.
Resilience is a transdisciplinary concept and this is reflected in the range of literature drawn upon to inform the study. The transfer of resilience concepts from ecology (its field of origin) to the social sciences and policy and practice is contested, with three key challenges identified: (i) a loss of nuance in the meaning of the concept due to rapid adoption, (ii), the problem of measurement – integration into public bureaucracy is challenging due to a quantitative focus, and (iii) an inability to adequately address the normative aspects of social theory. The literature has examined multi-capital frameworks as a potential means to address to these challenges. This thesis draws upon the New Zealand Government’s Living Standards Framework – a multi-capital framework – to illustrate how each of the three adverse event responses affected social resilience using social and human capital concepts. Perspectives were sought from 53 stakeholders at three levels – farmers who experienced the events, local and regional government and organisations that responded to the events, and national government and organisations who organised the response to the events.
Results show that social and human capital concepts can be used to describe important, but intangible, factors related to social resilience, which were influenced by the institutional responses to each event. Each of the three adverse events provides unique insights into the key drivers for positive and negative outcomes from institutional responses to adverse events. The drought response provides an example of a response that drew upon existing social connections and local capacity to provide the most effective response to what was described as the most challenging event. The earthquake response examines how establishing connections between the affected community and lead response agency is critical for emergent problem solving. The M. Bovis response demonstrates how a lack of connection between those affected and the lead response agency can inhibit adaptative capacity at both the local and institutional level. The Living Standards Framework is shown to be a useful tool which can be used to frame, generalise, and transfer resilience concepts between academia, policy and practice, aiding operationalisation efforts.