Glasgow Centre For Population Health Podcast

The fourth seminar in Series 7 took place on Tuesday 8 March 2011 at the Lighthouse, Glasgow. It has become all too evident in recent months that the world, as well as local society, is being subjected to an increasing pace of shocks. These range from natural events, such as earthquakes, eruptions, super-storms and large scale flooding, to societal shocks including financial crises, budget cuts and unrest with outworn regimes and politics. At the local level we see escalating fuel and food prices, weather stress and degrading public health. These challenges are having the effect of switching the agenda from sustainability towards resilience. The question emergency planners ask is "how can we plan for anything without having to plan for everything?" The essential nature of resilience is to prepare capacity to be able to bounce back from shocks, surprises and contingencies. The task is to get things returned to normal as quickly as possible. But supposing we are entering a future where normal as we kn