Planning under new extremes: resilience and the most vulnerable

Climate change is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, putting years of progress in developing countries at risk. The emerging discourse at the international policy level calls for a ‘resilience-based’ response to climate adaptation and infrastructure planning. This paper reviews the relevance of resilience theory in the context of infrastructure in developing countries and finds that ‘resilience thinking’ offers a way to improve engineers’ understanding of the adaptation needs of vulnerable communities. The paper develops a conceptual framework based on resilience thinking, and applies it to the case of a vulnerable coastal community in Honduras where primary fieldwork was undertaken to assess infrastructure planning. The analysis exposes the unintended consequences of traditional planning that exacerbates climate vulnerability and adversely impacts the long-term preparedness of vulnerable communities. Civil engineering scholars and practitioners concerned with sustainable development in developing countries may gain a superior understanding of climate adaptation by integrating resilience thinking into infrastructure planning.