Well, The Global South consists of the countries who receive foreign aid, places such as Africa and Nepal and Bangladesh. The first thing that comes to some people’s minds are ideas of a poverty-stricken nation, who are underdeveloped and full of instabilities and inequalities.

The task seemed simple – collect as many Resilience Action Plans (RAPs) as possible at a cross-national level. We first agreed that our database would provide information such as the country of origin, the type of coverage (e.g. national, municipal), plan publication date, and an authority or organisation responsible for preparing the plan.

Across the policy world and a variety of disciplines, the concept of resilience is a buzz-word that has become so ubiquitous as to be almost meaningless. Political scientists rarely grapple with conceptualizing or measuring resilience, despite the fact that local, national, and regional resilience planning and governance has become a mandate from governments and international organizations around the world.

Hello there, and welcome to GSAN! We are a group of scholars dedicated to building research capacity in the Global South. If you are interested in doing the same, we would love to have you join us.