Executive Summary
The concept of resilience offers a framework and vocabulary that facilitates cross-institutional and crossdisciplinary dialogue and learning and pushes us to examine systems that influence complex situations. To date, resilience thinking primarily focuses on natural disasters and climate change; it has not been extensively applied to politically-induced emergency situations. UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Mercy Corps conducted research to explore this intersection using Lebanon as a case study. More specifically, this paper examines what resilience means in the context of the Syrian crisis in Lebanon, and what programmatic interventions outlined in the 2015 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP) can support stabilization, while at the same time facilitating greater resilience in Lebanon.
Starting in 2011, Syria’s critical situation caused a range of spillover affects into neighboring Lebanon that resulted in a series of shocks and stresses on this small country, especially given the prolonged nature of the crisis. Interviews for this research were conducted in Lebanon from November/December 2014 with a variety of actors and observers, including senior central government officials as well as government officials at the provincial, district and municipal levels, along with social agencies, UN agencies, donors, international and national NGOs, business leaders, and groups of young Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians. All affirmed that the spillover affects created by the Syria’s crisis generated increasingly politically charged dynamics, resulting in greater instability in Lebanon—namely pressures on sectarian relations and resources-based tensions due to the massive number of refugees.
Resilience literature outlines the importance of building absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities to engage systems to promote stability and ultimately positive development outcomes. Strengthening resilience capacities in politically-induced emergencies cannot be limited to absorptive or adaptive capacities, rather should also lay the foundations for transformative capacity. Resilience requires that all three capacities work together for long-term benefits for communities. While resilience is often perceived as a distant goal, difficult to achieve or to focus on in the midst of an emergency, a politically-induced crisis offers opportunities to work toward greater systematic changes that can transform structures within a country or a community to increase resilience to identified shocks and stresses. Resilience-building capacities at multiple levels can and should be addressed within a humanitarian response by prioritizing a resilience approach and analyzing the evolving context using a resilience lens within an emergency situation when appropriate. Sufficient time and effort is required to understand the underlying system dynamics to identify key entry points that will help align humanitarian responses towards building transformative capacity so communities can sustain and grow their development objectives over time. In Lebanon, this can be focused on building sub-national structures and networks to more effectively prepare for, absorb and adapt to current and future shocks and stresses. This will strengthen Lebanon’s political, social and economic systems to create greater localized decision-making and greater equity of services, and ultimately greater well-being outcomes to Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian communities.
With the understanding that the most appropriate solutions will “emerge” naturally if the conditions for learning and sharing are fostered, Lebanese Crisis Response Plan (LCRP) is well positioned to serve as a guide for programming. It will be most effective if activities are conceived as a rapid succession of short cycle, carefully monitored projects which can be measured and analyzed to inform longer-term learning and progress toward proving a larger theory of change on achieving positive outcomes. Skills that enable and promote adaptive design and management are key to this approach. The LCRP incorporates priority measures articulated in the Government of Lebanon’s 2013 Roadmap of Priority Interventions for Stabilization from the Syrian Conflict to expedite strategies and funding to mitigate the impact of the crisis on Lebanon’s stability.1 This document offers a series of interrelated recommendations focused on subnational level interventions that could foster greater learning and build resilience in Lebanon for the health and wellbeing of communities in light of current and anticipated cycles of future emergencies. Many of these interventions are included in the LCRP, and as stakeholders move to implement these activities, they are encouraged to maintain openness towards innovation, experimentation and learning that is characteristic of resilience-building strategies. There should be a strong emphasis on the interface between “order and chaos”2 and between local government and the people, empowering local actors to arrive at a variety of context-based solutions by delegating decision-making and allocating resources at that level.