The EDURES self-assessment exercise provides indication of the performances of the learning environment under evaluation, according to 3 different profiles of resilience competences: absorptive, adaptive and transformative.
Each of the three profiles is crucial for resilience building. They are interlinked, complement one another, and can be found at various scales, from individuals to national and even social-ecological systems.
Given their interconnected nature, EDURES does not aim at focusing and enhancing just one set of competencies. On the contrary, while the toolkit identifies the preeminent profile of the learning environment under evaluation (e.g., “An absorptive learning environment”) it aims at providing strategic insights also on its performances for the others, thus allowing for the drafting of Resilience Strategies that foster the overall resilience of the system. Absorption is indeed essential to tackle continuous disturbances and to stop patterns of persistent instability and inequality from taking deep root. It ensures sufficient stability for deliberate adaptive and transformative shifts.
Given the ever-changing variables that interact with any given system (e.g., climate), adaptation is necessary to adjust to such changes since. Finally, when implementing transformation, awareness of the new risks and unpredictability that major changes will introduce is implied.
An absorptive profile characterises a system (i.e., a community, a learning environment, etc.) that is designed to anticipate and mitigate negative consequences deriving from emergencies using pre-established coping strategies to maintain and rebuild core structures and functions. This encompasses tactics and mechanisms employed during emergencies and crises, such as withdrawing children from school, implementing distance learning, etc.
A system with a preeminent absorptive profile foresees potential issues and primes itself for both present and upcoming, known emergencies. By integrating coping strategies, it ensures durability in the face of disturb- ances. It introduces redundancy, creating extra resources and alternatives, ensuring that basic services remain operational even during emergencies and crisis.
In simpler terms, the absorptive profile represents a system’s ability to recover post-disturbance. This encom- passes anticipating, strategizing, handling, and rebounding from familiar, typically short-lived critical situations and emergencies. The primary goal of absorptive capacity is stability, aiming to mitigate the adverse effects of shocks on individuals, families, learning environment, communities, and governing bodies.
An adaptive profile characterises a system that is able to “adjust, modify or change its characteristics and actions to moderate potential, future damage and to take advantage of opportunities, all in order to continue functioning without major qualitative changes in function or structural identity” (OECD 2013).
In this perspective, Adaptation is about making appropriate changes in order to better manage, or adjust to a changing situation, in particular in case of emergencies and crisis. A key aspect of the adaptive profile is the acceptance that systemic alterations are ongoing and highly unpredictable. Therefore, adaptation is about flexibility, and the ability to make incremental changes on an ongoing basis through process of continuous adjusting, learning, and innovation.
In conclusion, fostering adaptation is necessary because intentional transformation takes time and sustained engagement.
A transformative profile characterises a system that is “able to fundamentally recreate itself when ecological, economic or social structures make the existing system untenable” (OECD 2013).
Transformation promotes significant changes that may challenge and alter the values and power structures of the system – in the case of EDURES, the learning environment –, combining institutional and governance reforms with social, cultural and educational changes, technological innovations, and behavioural shifts.
In other words, transformation is about fundamentally changing the deep structures that cause or increase vulnerability and risk as well as how risk is shared within a system. Aiming to address the underlying failures of development or power imbalances that cause or increase and maintain risk, transformation does not deal simply with the proximate causes of risk and vulnerability but with their structural or root causes.
In a transformational perspective, it may also be possible for change at one level to generate momentum that influences higher levels. This instance is referred to as “crossing a threshold or reaching a tipping point” (OXFAM 2019). Tipping points are most often caused by external events such as emergencies and crisis, so-called disruptions to the systemic status quo that may reveal themselves also as opportunities to reshape and transform unjust and unsuitable practices and systems.
