By Professor Maria Soledad Garcia Ferrari
Building resilience through co-production
Our action research in Colombia has demonstrated that building resilience in the long term requires leveraging non-financial resources at the local level through a co-production approach that articulates community knowledge and capacity with those of local government, NGOs and academia. This is particularly important in urban areas exposed to the highest impact from disasters due to economic inequality and informality. Exploring the socio-ecological system within these urban areas, co-produced integrated risk management actions have focused on generating radical changes, creating opportunities for adaptive transformation, increased community agency, and reduced socio-economic inequalities and poverty. Although this approach has generated successful interventions to reduce risk reduction and adapt to climate change, challenges remain around power relations and the longevity of interventions if these are not embedded within planning and risk management frameworks.
Publications:
Garcia Ferrari, S., Smith, H., Morales E., Coupe, F. (2025, Forthcoming) “Urban resilience in Latin America, Proceedings of the British Academy
Smith, H., Garcia Ferrari, S., Medero, G. M., Rivera, H., Coupé, F., Mejía Escalante, M. E., Castro Mera, W., Montoya Correa, C. A., Abiko, A. & Marinho, F. A. M. (2022) ‘Exploring appropriate socio-technical arrangements for the co-production of landslide risk management strategies in informal neighbourhoods in Colombia and Brazil’ International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development., 14, 1, p. 242-263.
Garcia Ferrari, S. Crane De Narváez, S., Velasquez, C., Castro Mera, W., Bain, A. (2021) Collective action towards risk management in informal urban areas in Medellin: Covid lessons for reducing vulnerability and inequality, Frontiers in Environmental Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.726867
Garcia Ferrari, S.; Kaesehage, K.; Crane De Narváez, S.; Bain, A. (2021) Adaptation strategies for people: mitigating climate change related risks in low-income and informal urban communities through co-production, Journal of the British Academy: The urban impacts of climate change https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s9.007
Smith, H., Coupe, F., Garcia Ferrari, S., Rivera, H. & Castro Mera, W. E. (2020) ‘Toward negotiated mitigation of landslide risks in informal settlements: Reflections from a pilot experience in Medellin, Colombia’, Ecology and Society 25, 1, Art. 19.
Cover picture from the project of Resilience Medellin.
