Crisis Lab Podcast Episode 6_Final Audio
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Rade Rajkovchevski: [00:00:00] Technically, we see that there is a lot of theory, and from the other side, there is a lot of practice. This topic of resilience somehow shifted the approach in both organizations from the muscles levels, so pure emergency and disaster management, to a broader approach, so called disaster risk management, dealing with risk of disasters and emergencies.
And treats and security treats in general. Authorization, they are investing a lot, building their autonomous and authentic approach toward the resilience.
Kyle King: Welcome to another episode of the Chrysler Lab Podcast. I'm Kyle. I'm your host. And today we're diving into a more of an intriguing discussion about the topic of resilience and resilience. and civil preparedness. And particularly, we're looking at the distinct strategies adopted by two major international organizations, which is really the European Union, and then the perspectives from NATO.
And so our guest today is going to be Rade, who is a seasoned professional in the field of civil [00:01:00] protection, humanitarian action, disaster preparedness, and also resilience, with an extensive background and knowledge in the unique and various different ways of the European Union and NATO and how they could all work together to Fortify and build resilience in their member countries and the communities that they serve.
Now, resilience is always a topic that is, I would think has gotten some flack in recent years because it is abstract. It is vague and sometimes that is intentional and by design. But what we discussed in the podcast today, we'll be trying to add some more concrete perspectives to these themes. And especially look into things like the EU's comprehensive approach to resilience, which is more looking at sustainability and fairness and democracy, but also discussing NATO's approach, which is more focused on national and collective resilience as a key factor in credible defense and deterrence.
And Radhi, it's good to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Rade: Thanks once again, Kyle, and it's an honor for being part of this very selected crew. Basically, we discussed about many topics and probably now it's the right momentum to point out on several questions. So I'm very curious [00:02:00] to hear from your side, what will be the, what are the questions and how we may manage this time regarding to the questions and about the interest of the audience.
Thank you.
Kyle King: Yeah, thanks. It's a. It's an interesting discussion. I think one that needs to be had because we often don't really do a type of compare and contrast between these topics. And so now's a good opportunity to do that. But before we get started, maybe just a quick introduction, a little bit about yourself, your background and some of the work that you're doing.
Rade: Yeah, basically, let's see. I'm. Professor at whole that put my career at home for taking the leadership over the disaster preparedness and prevention initiative for Southeastern Europe. In the next three years, I'm going to lead this initiative as a multilateral body that gathers the heads of the National Seal Protection Authorities from Europe.
Then country starting from Slovenia to Turkey. So our intention is to make the Southeast Europe more safer place for living and somehow to increase the standards in preparedness and prevention in the civil protection. So prior [00:03:00] to joining DPPI Southeast Europe Almost 18 years I was in academia, starting from a teaching assistant, senior teaching assistant, and at the end I arrived to full professor in crisis management and policing.
But besides professorship I was also engaged in many projects, mainly from the European civil protection mechanism as a civil protection technical expert. But also. As an expert and consultant in many other consultancies and initiatives for example, from the UN agency like un, UNDP, like UNDR, making citizen resilient issues related to the gender and disastrous management.
In a case of UNDP, also dealing with vulnerable and margin marginalized groups in the case of Council of Europe consultancies, but also in many other topics. Referring to the work of the National Societies of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent in the, in North Macedonia, but also in, in the other countries in the region and beyond.
Kyle King: Thanks for that. Yeah. That's a very broad background. It's going to be very helpful for us to [00:04:00] unpack this topic. And as we were just talking about, and as I mentioned, the concept of resilience, and I think in this case, we should narrow that a little bit further and to, let's just say resilience in terms of civil preparedness.
This is. Something that is, I think for a number of years, we started to see the terminology of resilience come around. People have very many different views on this. Even when we talk about today, European Union, and then also NATO, even inside these organizations, there's different views on what resilience means and different interpretations.
And so it's often hard to frame these things together, but I think at least for the audience listening, if we can explain in a very general concept of how the European Union understands this approach to resilience and civil preparedness, and then how NATO approaches this. And their perspective, if you could outline and allow us to separate these two as we get started.
Rade: Yeah, basically the EU approach is somehow following the UN guidelines in this way and somehow is trying to transfer the achievements of the UN, let's say, UN agencies and transfer some approaches and achievements from UN agencies into the, [00:05:00] to the EU policies. And this is a. Let's say complementary way of building the resilience.
It is widely understood as a, as an interdisciplinary or cross sectoral topic within the U. N. That's why somehow the U. N. besides, besides gathering the, not only civil protection, it also gathers other departments. Following the U. N. approach, probably the environment domain is a key, is the key actor in dealing with the resilience.
From the other side, EU is trying to build its own. Capacities and investing in the European civil protection mechanism in this way approach in EU is also considered as a very relevant more and more joined the force on from the countries are also tailored to the building, the resilience, not.
So I, I, I think that it's a must do, and them the milestones towards the [00:06:00] resilience and discussing at various levels and in different environments in NATO is still considered as a concept that is still ongoing. Just on paper, but from the other perspective, we saw that NATO is investing a lot in building the resilience of nations, especially following the Ukraine crisis, when we saw how NATO is dealing with the resilience in a more pragmatic way and how it's implementing, in fact, the seven NATO baselines on the border of NATO that is, that are, let's say, countries like Slovakia, Romania and Poland.
Technically, We see that there is a lot of theory and from the other side, there is a lot of practice. This topic of resilience somehow shifted the approach in both organization from the muscles levels, so pure emergency and disaster management to a broader approach, so called disastrous management, dealing with risk of disasters and emergencies.
and treats and security treats in general. [00:07:00] So both organizations are investing a lot and in that way, the both organization, they are building their autonomous and authentic approach toward the resilience. Following the EU, probably there is more evident progress in building the resilience and building the capacities for resilience architecture.
But from the point of NATO There is still a gap of shifting the force from the national to local level. And probably the expectations are that in the next six, seven years there will be a serious shift. Once the some issues and challenges of implementing the resilience at in innate to it at national level will be solved.
Kyle King: Yeah. Thanks for that overview. I think that's really interesting 'cause you raised something actually I had not. really previously thought about very much, which was the level of engagement and localization of resilience and civil preparedness in terms of the local communities. And then NATO's perspective, of course, being national, right?
And so the EU and following upon the UN sustainable development goals, the SDGs, and then adopting [00:08:00] that. But then also the EU's approach is also unique in terms of, it's also emphasizing sustainability, fairness, democracy, these other aspects, which are not, let's say more. Quote unquote, traditional things that we look at when we think of disaster preparedness and mitigation and these other sort of phases of emergency management.
And so can you discuss how they're, the EU is trying to integrate these principles into their view of resilience and how? And I guess the biggest question is how is this practically applied? Because the other challenge we have is these are also sometimes abstract concepts, right? In terms of, let's just say building democracy.
It's something that is, it's nice and it's intent and it's idea and the division, but practically it's not so easy to quantify and achieve. And then you add that into the concept of resilience makes it even more complicated. So I welcome hearing your thoughts about how that's practically applied across these domains.
Rade: Basically, EU is following the strategies and principles and probably the [00:09:00] policies that are, let's say, agreed between the member states, but from the other side, EU is investing a lot at local level. Investing at a local level makes the results more visible and more, let's say, measurable. In that way, the approaching the resilience toward, let's say, no traditional, from the point of crisis management or civil protection, toward some non conventional wording like mitigation, like fairness, democracy, probably it's an approach that is dealing with the reasons, not with the causes or not with the consequences.
So in that way, Investing in, in, in building less vulnerable societies makes the risk, let's say, less affectable toward the communities and and societies. For example, in the case of sustainability the U. N. integrates environmental sustainability into disaster response and infrastructure rebuilding efforts.
From the other side, in building the fairness and democracy. It ensures that civil [00:10:00] preparedness measures are inclusive, protecting vulnerable population and involving citizens in decision making process. So this approach of having the participatory activities as an approach for involving the communities probably is considered as a typical bottom top approach that comes from the needs of the communities and societies and somehow reflects On the policies and strategies.
So it's totally different. For example, regarding the approaches in many other areas, but somehow it's a kind of, it's a kind of modern contemporary approach that gathers the participation of many actors and somehow is trying to manage the voices of different actors in building the resilience. So probably that is the, for example, in making cities resilient campaign of UN, which is largely, let's say recognized by the communities and societies in Europe.
Also, there is a huge success because it also gathers the [00:11:00] 10 thematic area, not only civil protection, but other domains that are relevant and somehow It encourage the cooperation between different actors for building the resilience or toward the implementation of structural and non structural measures that are also a kind of worry goals in disaster risk management in the UN environment.
Kyle King: Hey, this is Kyle. Just a quick pause in our show for a second. Did you know that most of our guests on the Crisis Lab podcast have courses inside of Crisis Lab? If you're finding value in these conversations or they pique your interest and you want to dive deeper into the topic, just head over to crisislab.
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Thanks for that. So that makes it a little bit more clear because with the EU's approach of being bottom up, as you were talking about, and then ensuring that at a community level, the community engagement level, that all the sort of representation is there and the discussions on the decisions is very helpful.
Whereas conversely with NATO, that is a very much a top down driven approach through international to national level responsibilities and entities. And also I recognize that following up on that, that the EU also employs these sort of resilience dashboards, right? And so that's also a tool that they're monitoring the progress of the resilience work that's being done and how they're progressing.
And can you elaborate a little bit more in terms of the role and the functions of these resilience dashboards and in the context of what we were just talking about? [00:13:00] So if you're have this bottom up approach and you're working with communities and making sure there's a voice in the process and things are fair and equal and engaged and the policies and capabilities you're developing, how is that captured and then rolled up into a resilience dashboard, for example?
Rade: Probably the dashboards, the dashboards regarding to the experience of using the dashboards probably they provide a kind of continuity and good overview over the activities. For example, when you are dealing with projects, always you have some start point and end points. So sustainability is very hard to be provided following the projects.
From the point of integrating the dashboards in, Implementing the resilience there, there are two, two key points that are, let's say, very relevant in implementing the concept of dashboards. The first one is the monitoring and evaluation bio. The second one is the decision making support.
So the dashboards track key indicators of resilience such as infrastructure, robust robustness social equality, and environmental [00:14:00] sustainability. When you have the indicators and the measurable achievements at one place, probably it is better to follow the progress and to check how you can deal, how you can manage the anomalies or some consistency in implementation of the plans, strategies, and policies.
And from the other side, decision making process dashboards are, let's say, complex, are seen as a complex data gathering systems that are in every momentum able to. To, to you, to use, to manage, to operate with the data that they have. From that point, the dashboards provide data to policymakers that are helping to identify the areas needing improvement and ensuring the transparency and accountability.
Dealing with the civil protection in a traditional way, probably we have this principle of interoperability and inclination, but this is a part of the command chain. Dashboards are more complex because they are not involving only the civil protection and crisis management or coping [00:15:00] capacities.
So they're getting the data in a more systematic way and they are getting the data from various actors. So in this way, probably, especially for the decision making process, it makes the decision making process more, let's say participatory and more, more transparent. So it is very clear how. The data can be used and how the decision can be made.
So probably the system of dashboards is still under construction, but there is some progress in, in, in the dashboards that they were discussed in the, within the previous presentations, but still there's some space for an improvement and probably some some space for revisions of the approaches result or as a kind of follow up activities following the implementation of the concept of the dashboards.
Kyle King: Yeah, the EU dashboards, resilience dashboards are really interesting, I think, because as you mentioned, there are these broader topics and it's all fed by different projects, different information that's already [00:16:00] out there, all the different assessments and the things that they're, I would guess I would say synthesizing, bringing all these things together into these data points.
And we'll include the link to the dashboards in the show notes for people that are listening. But it's really interesting to take a look at it because the, yeah. Just a sheer number of different factors you're looking at it. This is all just, I would phrase it as like contextual information. This is all just important context and information.
But if you're looking at geopolitical resilience, which is on the dashboard, you're looking at, for example, raw material, energy supplies, value chains, and trade, financial globalization, security, and demography. And the way that these dashboards are organized, it's just indicators, right? So it's either progress or no progress or declining, I guess I would say in this area or just status quo.
And there's really no, of course, there's, they're color coded. It's all sort of charts are color coded and there's indicators in terms of progress and where it's going. But it's also interesting just to look at it, to see trends and indicators on a country by country level, just to see how things are [00:17:00] progressing and how things are being reported, but shifting over to more to a NATO approach, because when I look at the dashboard, I think also very sort of macro level, national level.
And if we think about NATO and its approach to resilience and how it, NATO focuses on national and more collective capacities of all the member states and allies. How can we explain this principle that sort of this idea of resilience and how it translates into strategies and different initiatives with NATO countries?
Rade: Yeah, besides the EU, that have very comprehensive approach, NATO is more, let's say, tailored, the efforts of NATO are tailored according to their NATO priorities and priorities are dynamic. So they're changing from year to year, there is, let's say, some kind of traditional approach in defining the priorities of NATO and they're somehow related to the mission and the objectives of NATO.
But for example, [00:18:00] the NATO somehow the concept of resilience are transforming at several level. For example, in the case of defining the national preparedness plans. The concept of resilience is integrated toward the specific topics that are point of interest of some countries or of the alliance entirely.
So each member country develops plans to enhance critical infrastructure, cyber security, and public health systems. This, the third one, probably, is a, Consequence of dealing with COVID with pandemic and probably it will be still actual and in the next couple of years, but the expectations are these priorities will be redefined according to the security treats and security changes that are facing the North Atlantic here.
From the other side, also practicing the resiliency in NATO is also more in, in the area of preparedness and response. and toward practicing the collective exercises, which is purely preparedness. [00:19:00] NATO conducts joint exercises to improve interoperability and collective response capabilities. Again, focused on NATO business resilience baselines.
These two efforts of NATO reflections, how they deal with the resilience through integration of the concept within the national preparedness plans and in the, in, or in practicing the exercises, collective exercises. It shows that NATO is quite more pragmatical and, but it is less investing in prevention than in, in the, in, in the preparedness and response.
Probably the expectations in, in, in NATO are that the countries will invest a lot of in the capacity building in the next couple of years. And using this collective approach in the Alliance they will build their own national capacity store toward the resilience and somehow some achievements from some more advanced countries will be used as a lessons learned probably, or is, or as a knowledge base that is going to be integrated lately into the [00:20:00] other national preparedness plans.
Steven
Kyle King: So there is this aspect of NATO where, you know, as you mentioned, there's these sort of joint exercises and things like that, and those are heavily. built upon national plans already. And so that's basically in a very sort of simple sense. That's where NATO stops. It's okay. You have your national plans and that's it.
But when you're comparing that to the EU and that community based approach or bottom up approach, which is the predominant sort of framing. of the EU work is that it goes beyond just the national plan, it goes on to the community level. And so NATO stops at that national level, but then also works very much at a collective level to increase collective capabilities.
And, and you're right, the pandemic did, I think, highlight and identify a number of gaps in capabilities that the nations all were looking at and also emphasized not only just at a national level, but also, highlighted the collective security for vulnerabilities and that are existent within the alliance if we're looking at just NATO itself.[00:21:00]
But of course, when we talk about NATO and there's this emphasis on security, collective defense and security. And so what does the resilience mean within that? As you mentioned, Limited scope of this is specifically tailored to our international mandate. And so then we, if we look at Ukraine, for example, where we have the topic of resilience, but also even more defined, if we look at critical infrastructure.
Or societal resilience and preparedness. So these are the things that are also out there that are interesting coming out of the war in Ukraine, but there's different applications to this. And so NATO was obviously looking at that. And then from a conflict and a war perspective, basically saying. Where are we vulnerable and how can we enhance our both national and international security?
And the EU has its own approach and when it looks at NATO as well, it's looking at Ukraine as well. And so what are your thoughts on how the EU views the approach in Ukraine as a contrast of how maybe NATO views it in terms of a collective security approach?
Rade: [00:22:00] Basically, we saw that there are many, let's say, many political decisions that came from the main EU bodies like the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, but EU is somehow dealing probably It recognized the resilience in a different way than NATO.
That is probably the fact. In dealing with the crisis, EU is starting always from the soft measures typical for the international politics and international relations. So in this case, the EU response, for example, it was focused on the humanitarian aid in Ukraine, how to deliver the, how to activate the DGECO mechanism, the European Civil Protection mechanism to, to be at service for the Ukrainian government.
So how this humanitarian aid to, to reach Ukraine toward the new country. So they are very, they were somehow very pragmatical in building these logistical hubs on the Eastern flag of EU. Also several times, the EU activated the [00:23:00] mechanism, like the economic sanctions toward the Russia.
And also it supported largely the refugee integration in the member states. So they agreed about the quota and how these people from the displaced person from Ukraine, how to be settled into the EU countries and how to start this process of integration. So we know that most of these displaced persons are the women and children, but from the other side, they build the mechanism, how to.
How these people not to suffer the consequences from the Russian aggression of Ukraine. NATO was quite more pragmatical, probably it was quite pragmatical in the technical way, only using the opportunities of the European civil protection mechanism. While NATO was more pragmatical because the attack of Ukraine is an attack of the eastern flank of NATO country.
So it was a kind of a red button for activating the capacity. So the eastern flank of NATO and being prepared for eventual [00:24:00] collapse of Ukraine and transferring the transfer of the crisis from Ukraine to, to the NATO eastern flank. So in that way, NATO emphasized the military support to the member countries.
And we know that Poland was quite different on the eastern flank, but following the Russian aggression of Ukraine, all these Baltic states, even Bulgaria and Romania, they purchased a lot of weaponry and they somehow invested a lot in modernizing their military systems. and military architecture, and also NATO invested a lot in building this strategic defense initiatives that are quite thematic for the, for example, for the Black Sea, because the Black Sea is the gate between Russia and many NATO countries, and not, not to forget that the position of Ukraine when their coast is somehow limited or occupied in a huge extent currently.
So also in reinforcing the Eastern flank defenses, [00:25:00] so besides nationally, they activated the red alarm, the Eastern flank countries of NATO, they also alliance made a kind of progress how to equip and how to reinforce the capacities of the Eastern flank NATO countries.
Kyle King: Yeah, I think it was certainly a wake up call and that forced NATO to have to readjust things and start really looking at the Eastern flank and strengthening many different areas.
And also taking a hard look at societal resilience and what that means and how would NATO define societal resilience, which also is an ongoing discussion and while the EU is looking at a humanitarian aspect, NATO is looking at it from a security aspect. And I, I think another, as this is, and I guess what I was thinking about when we, when you were explaining that is, we're two plus years into the war in Ukraine, and it's not the only sort of global conflict that's going on.
And we've had this, the word resilience floating around for a number of years already, I'm very curious about the idea [00:26:00] or the sort of potential risk of something like resilience fatigue, right? So this conversation is not only happening across international organizations about what is resilience and continually trying to define it and work through these different programs and develop overall resilience, but we're having the same discussions on a national level.
There's discussions going on at a community level. And so, what are your perceptions on the idea of resilience fatigue? And, and how do you think this can be addressed? How to, how can it remain relevant, but also still easy to be able to communicate so that people can understand it?
Rade: Look, if you mean from the point of terminology, resilience, fatigue, I think there is no fatigue, but from the technical aspect, there is a kind of fatigue probably because even the cause of the, especially on the Eastern flank, the, and even in Central Europe, the societies, they change and it affected the mentality, this aggression of Russia to Ukraine.
So [00:27:00] Somehow it, it fostered the building, the security culture among the population, but from the other side, having in mind that sometimes the countries and the societies they are facing with some challenges, especially for the, this continuous economic crisis, building the resilience, probably it should be somehow supported with huge investments in the capacities.
Probably from the point of mindset, there are some changes. We know that currently the Eastern flank perceived the security in a different way. Comparing the reception regarding the security and for example, regarding the threat from a Russian attack to Ukraine, it was totally different. Three, four years ago, when you discuss with the people from, for example, US or Western Europe, and then with the people from Central and Eastern Europe.
So from that way, and this kind of a reflection probably was existing among the population, but from the political level, we saw that from the [00:28:00] point of armies of the Eastern flank, there is a kind of conformity in, in dealing with modernization and purchasing the weaponry. So after this aggression, we saw that somehow they accelerated this processes of being more integrated into the Alliance.
especially toward the, this is a case of the new members, how they dealt with the security issues. And now they assume that there is a kind of, they should be prepared. So they should be prepared for any scenario that could arise from the attack of Russia to Ukraine. And probably seeing the perspective or seeing the today's perspective of the resilience in Europe, We see that many countries there, let's say they have some kind of empathy toward the happenings in the Eastern flank and especially in Ukraine, they're more sensitive and somehow there is a, there's more and more initiatives and common efforts.
How to return the situation on [00:29:00] the, at the first point at the beginning, I am not sure how it is going to develop in the next months or years, but see a kind of progress that there is a, in a way that there is a more synergy between the nations and communities in dealing with the resilience and in understanding the resilience as a common approach in dealing with the security threats.
And also from the point of disasters, from the point of view, we also see that there is a kind of solidarity. We saw many, that many disasters in the last decade, somehow they gather all the politicians and all the leaders in the societies at the same table, just to see that the borders are totally irrelevant when you are dealing with the disasters.
So disasters are somehow a kind of limited security threats, but plus they do not recognize the borders. Earthquakes are. Unpredictable. So many countries that are investing in resilience, for example, in somehow gaining a few seconds or minutes, the disaster [00:30:00] and investing a lot in the more sophisticated early warning system.
But from the other side, the capacities are limited anywhere. The technology currently is somehow limited. There is maturity in the efforts and this maturity probably is supported by, by, by the top level in building the. infrastructure that will systematically use the efforts of the countries and all the societies in building the resilience that is, and this point should be considered as a great success in building the resilience across Europe and entirely in the North Atlantic region.
Kyle King: I think you mentioned one interesting point there, which is really the future of resilience work. And I guess in many ways, when I look back and I reflect upon it, you could always see that there is going to be And there will continue to be an evolution of emergency management, crisis management sort of preparedness.
It's going to evolve into something that would [00:31:00] eventually lead into some larger national sort of system or structure. And so even as you and I have talked before, there has long been a correlation between emergency management and national security, for example, so that there's always been a correlation.
a connection. So I think it was almost inevitable to have an evolution of emergency management, crisis management, and to something bigger that we're framing, that we frame now in terms of having national resilience and societal resilience, and even down to a local level of community resilience, which incorporates not only the stove pipes, if you will, the pillars of what we're working on and preparedness and response and recovery and all that, but incorporating everything else, like what the EU is doing in terms of over economic factors and everything else that have a real.
Influids are our ability to be resilient. So if you're in a small town or city and you are predominantly supported by a large manufacturing plant or something, and that plant closes and you lose the vast majority of jobs that are supporting that town economically, it has a tremendous [00:32:00] impact on community resilience.
And so I think my point being, I think there's going to be at some point, when I look back upon this now, there's going to be an evolution towards something like resilience, but you raised an interesting sort of word there, which is like the future of resilience. And that's also intriguing in terms of how this will, how will we continue to shape and understand the word or efforts towards building more resilient nations and more resilient communities, I guess I would say.
And how is this evolving internationally or nationally? What are your perspectives on the future of resilience?
Rade: Probably the Future of resolving the or dealing with the resilience probably it comes somehow related with understanding of risk. So especially toward the vulnerability. So when we tackle with the vulnerabilities, one of the key factors in defining the risk, that is the main purpose is how you will define the vulnerability across different categories of people.
[00:33:00] So not every citizen can be measuring in the same way. So for example, the different socioeconomic Factors are affecting differently the vulnerability of the people. And moreover, we have the point of population is one of two, one out of two indicators in dealing the exposure. So merging these two points probably should be a good indicator how we should deal with the resilience.
So under understanding the needs of the society, of the population, even the nation, as you said. What are the needs in the communities and in the societies, and then starting from the needs, how we should transfer the needs into the activities. So there is a huge trajectory between identifying the needs and implementing the measures in the action plans.
And meanwhile, we should deal with the assessment. How to put the different demography into the assessment and how this demography should be relevant in dealing with the disaster or emergency management. Let's say the [00:34:00] tendency in dealing with the resilience is to be people oriented or people centered.
It is great to have an achievement at the national level, but before having an achievement at the national level, you should invest a lot at the local level. And communities and the individuals, they are the key cells when you are dealing with the resilience. It is so called in the disaster risk management, there is a kind of word so called micronization.
So you should step down to each household and to each individual if you want to have a kind of success. Thank you very much. So that's why probably the concept of building a resilience should be somehow segregate. Being segregated at the national level is pretty difficult, but being segregated at the local level, at the community that has, let's say, a more comprehensive approach in building the resilience.
It could be a good recipe for success.
Kyle King: I think that makes sense. When you're looking at individual communities, they all have different risk profiles and threats and hazards and everything else that go along with that and have different capabilities to respond and there's [00:35:00] different socioeconomic factors that go along with that and.
I, I, to me, when we think about the future of resilience, I think about three distinct points. I think one is that we have traditionally come from, and it's getting better, right? It's getting better. But I think we have come from a traditional sort of response orientation, and we're very focused on our own distinct domains.
And so if it's, as for me, I was coming out of the fire service, or if you're coming out of law enforcement, or if you're coming from the medical field, You have your roles and responsibilities, and I think the future of that is going to be still the same, but you need to be acutely more aware of everything that's happening around you, and that's impacting your ability to deliver.
These emergency services, your ability to operate, your ability to support your community. And so there's this more complex environment that I think that we're getting into. And I think that we're going to have to, the second point is going to really have to have some type of hyper local [00:36:00] solutions, like what you're talking about.
And to do that, you have to take in all this different factors, right? And so there's this element of cross domain learning. We have to understand the more complexities in our environment, the effects of our taxes and tax base. On the amount of resources we can afford. And that's going to be an interesting point in time because who's having that conversation.
If you're sitting in the traditional services, I guess I would call them quote, unquote fire, police, emergency medical, all that stuff. You're not always involved in those conversations, but now it's going to be more of a community based collective approach to how can we ensure our community resilience, because.
And that includes private sector, that includes nonprofit organizations. That's going to include a much more diverse group of actors from the community who can have these discussions. And this can have to be a lot more involved than what I think we're doing it now. So there's opportunities to create a very successful environment there in the future.
And I think it's also going to be really more chaotic. [00:37:00] And this is where I would link it up to a national level of what you're talking about. It's, you can have very hyper local discussions, whether about conditions facing a community, but all of that, just like on these e resilience dashboards, it's all aggregated data rolled up to a nationals, how does that all contribute to national security type of discussion?
And in doing that, it becomes also in a top down sort of approach. What is the impact on these bigger issues of Food security or cyber on those attacks on critical infrastructure at a national level, what impact does that have on our community? So that comes to my third point of as it incrementally gets to an international or sorry, national level, or even as we've seen the impact of global conflict on our own supply chains or whatever the case is, we need to have awareness at a community level that we are susceptible to external events.
And that's going to be something that we have to raise our own awareness and pay attention to, because that's something that In a connected world that we have now put ourselves in a position of [00:38:00] being exposed to. So it's going to be more complex at the end of the day as we start to try and determine or think about the future of what resilience might look like.
Rade: Yeah, look, technically the local are still dependent from the central from the national level because they are the lawmakers. So they are making the legal framework. And from the point of local, probably the progress is more evident because it's a limited community, limited resources, and sometimes the limited resources can be a kind of advantage because you should engage everyone, NGOs, private sector, and.
Especially when you are dealing with a critical infrastructure, you should recognize that the private sector is critical in bringing the know how to the local community. The NGOs are very complementary, especially for the sheltering, for many services that they usually provide in case of disasters. Then their capacities should be somehow used, especially in the case when the local authorities or national authorities are [00:39:00] not able to establish their own mobilities.
It is a matter of games, or it is a matter of, are you, do you want to make a kind of inclusive resilience approach, or you want to have a resilience approach by the book or traditional, as you said. So dealing with resilience in a traditional way probably is good, but not for this century. So we should move toward a modern approach that involves all the parties and using all the capacities available.
And somehow we're trying to manage this. There is also a kind of paradox in dealing with the Especially in the disaster management, but in many cases in security management, as you highlighted, the, it is a challenge of interagency cooperation that should be somehow, sometimes difficult and more difficult than establishing the international cooperation, especially in the disaster response assistance operations.
But it is pretty easy to establish the international cooperation, then to use the capacities of the locals or the, of the subnational, let's say, authorities. [00:40:00]
Kyle King: Yeah, I agree. Sometimes interagency cooperation within our own institutions is very difficult, but thanks a lot for your time today. It's been a really interesting discussion as we try and unpack what resilience means to international organizations and how that correlates down to a community level, I think for me, it's really interesting to dive into these topics and try to unpack them a little bit more as we try to get oriented around the type of work that we need to do in the future.
So again, thanks a lot for joining us today. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find you?
Rade: Best way is on the website of DPPI Southeast Europe or on the list of the experts of CBI. So I'm very, I'm really very pleased to, to answer to any other questions beside your questions, please.
This is a message to the audience to use this kind of expertise. And being, let's say, usable for their career development and progress. All
Kyle King: right. Thank you very much for that. And yeah, thanks again for joining us on the show. Thank you.
Rade: Thank you.
Kyle King: That's all the time we have for today. And again, a huge thanks to our guest, [00:41:00] Dr.
Radej Rekonczewski for sharing his knowledge and experiences. We aim to understand the concept of resilience and civil preparedness, and also within the context of the EU. And NATO. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into the Crisis Lab podcast. We hope that today's episode has provided you with new insights and perspectives to better navigate the challenges in your own field.
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