Description
In the field of international development, the concepts of vulnerability and resilience are frequently used as static parameters of populations exposed to various kinds of risk. The proliferation of indicators and indices that seek to express vulnerability and resilience quantitatively is a case in point and reflects the technocratization of our responses to global challenges, including climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, seen through a more critical lens, neither vulnerability and resilience are static. Rather, they are a result of dynamic socio-political processes founded on exclusion on the one hand, and privilege on the other. This also applies to the discursive level, where rather than a ‘scientific’ observation, assessing someone as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘lacking resilience’ is a political choice that carries tangible consequences for those assessed (Mikulewicz 2020).
In line with these theoretical observations, this paper will present the initial findings of two GCRF-funded projects led by the GCU Centre for Climate Justice which are centred on resilience and vulnerability to the compounding impacts of climate change and COVID-19 in rural Malawi and Rwanda. I will juxtapose and critically analyze the understandings of local resilience and vulnerability by development practitioners and rural residents by confronting the former’s technocratic imaginary with the lived experiences of climate change and COVID-19 as reported by the latter via interviews, surveys, focus groups and digital storytelling. The paper will conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development in Malawi and Rwanda.
