With what initially started out as a resilience research project in response to the 2019/2020 Black Summer, C-EDGE researchers Professor Allan O’Connor, Associate Professor Rob Hallak, and Associate Professor Claudine Soosay found their participants (and themselves) additionally amidst the COVID-19 crisis and the onset of wine tariffs on Australian imports to China.
While these biological and economic crises endured longer than the research project, they did highlight the limitations of a cyclic representation of resilience, rather emphasising the overlapping of cycles.
Professor O’Connor said that the brief was to help the Regional Australia Institute to answer some key questions relating to regional business ecosystem resilience post Black Summer 2019/2020.
“What we found, in a business ecosystem sense, relationships are key in supporting business survival and rapid recovery to respond to local demand, says Allan.
“Resilience is not achieved by simply coordinating a sequential set of steps or even recognising the steps as a discrete cycle. Resilience is achieved by recognising the systemic interactions of events, stakeholders and activities.
Associate Professor Rob Hallak explains the research questions as threefold:
- What are the key factors and effects of regional business ecosystem resilience that influence regional community recovery after disaster events?
- How do Australian regional business ecosystems demonstrate resilience in response to disaster events and influence regional community recovery?
- What strategies are suggested by the evidence that Governments and regional policy-makers may implement to aid building regional business ecosystem resilience to influence rural community recovery after major disaster events?
“The primary objective for this research was to deliver a policy framework to guide building RBE resilience. One of the major recommendations is the need for a national coordination strategy for crisis recovery and resilience, says Rob.
“We’d like to think maybe someone in Canberra heard our calls as the National Recovery and Resilience Agency was established in July 2022, then replaced by the National Emergency Management Agency in September.
Associate Professor Claudine Soosay explains the roles at the state and local levels.
“At the state level, the state coordinating bodies become the conduit to the national level, identifying the gaps in knowledge, infrastructure and resources, she says.
“And at the local level, industry associations and local government authorities have an important role in supporting the local SME community to get connected.
“We found there are key roles for local councils, the local business community, individual businesses however across all of these there is a shared responsibility to build social networks that underpin the success of response and recovery initiatives for the regional communities.”
The importance of this sort of research cannot be underplayed given between January 2019 and April 2020, Australia experienced 62 natural disasters of varying type, intensity and duration (Department of Home Affairs, 2020). These disaster events included bushfires, floods, cyclones, storms and heavy rainfall, and affected each state and territory.
“With the increasing number of disaster events and the associated impacts on businesses and communities, there is the need for a sustained focus on building resilience, particularly in the vulnerable rural and regional areas, explains Allan.
“For this project, we first examined the factors that influence the resilience of businesses, and then deepened our enquiry into how the interactions between government, community and businesses build resilience of both business and rural and regional communities.”
The team identified seven key policy recommendations:
- Coordination of a national resilience strategy is of primary importance to achieve coordinated, rapid, and targeted responses to enhance RBE resilience.
- National strategy coordination must be considered an ongoing and persistent task not just at the time of crisis.
- RBE resilience can be strengthened by policies and programs targeting greater preparedness.
- Policies across all levels of government should respect the local diversity of needs and build trust in the local intelligence of committed regional partners.
- Greater capacity for regional connectedness during the times of crisis would significantly increase RBE resilience.
- Simplify the multiplicity of disaster support and response programs, and thus ease the regulatory burden on the recovery processes.
- There is a major national strategy gap identified at the residual learning phase during and after crisis and recovery. Policy is recommended that fills this void through a national resilience strategy coordination unit.
Resilience is a matter for all. Every individual, business and organisation can play a part in building regional business ecosystems that are resilient in times of crisis. We trust this work serves to identify the opportunities for every stakeholder to act in being prepared and building resilience among their community.
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