The Resilience Academy was held in Frauenwörth Abbey on the Fraueninsel on Lake Chiemsee earlier this year. Organised by the Munich Re Foundation, the United Nations University-Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and ICCCAD, applications for the Resilience Academies run every two years with participants meeting the first year in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the second year in Germany. All the participants come from diverse institutes and organisations of which several individuals in the last cohort came from research organisations all around the world.
A central theme of these Academies is to explore innovative ways to improve people’s resilience and adaptability to environmental shocks. It is the intention of the organisers to foster discussions during the week long getaway so as to create the scientific foundation for this. As such, one of the goals of the Academy is to draft scientific articles and publish them in international journals. This year, participants made a lot of progress towards this goal with a commentary piece already approved for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Another goal of the Academy is to foster relations between people and to bring individuals community closer especially those working on similar issues around the world. This year pledges were made by participants to continue various activities/practices that the Academy brought forth. A select number of these pledges were caught on camera and are presented below:
Resilience Academy 2014: Participant Pledges from Stephanie Alice on Vimeo.
David Wrathall (Organiser, UNU-EHS): “Only when one views resilience and livelihoods together can one develop successful strategies… Many processes are today considered in an isolated fashion: fighting poverty, climate change, disaster prevention. That is not good. An integrated approach, like the one practised at the Resilience Academy, is better.”
Robin Bronen (Participant & Human Rights Lawyer): “It is high time to take a new, holistic approach. That is the only way that we can guarantee that all people get what they have been entitled to for many years now already under the globally acknowledged human rights: health, an appropriate standard of living and self determination.“
We are now accepting applications for the 2015/2016 period. The theme will be on ‘Enhancing resilience to minimize loss and damage – providing knowledge for the UNFCCC’ and applications are due 30 January 2014. For more information, please see the call for applications here.
To view the full call for proposals, please click here to download.