Resilience Science Must-Knows

The report "Resilience Science Must-Knows" provides a science-based framework for decision-makers to build systemic resilience. It distills decades of research into nine core principles, emphasizing that resilience is not merely "bouncing back" but the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform. The document highlights the urgency of this approach as the Earth enters the Anthropocene, where human activity pushes planetary boundaries and creates cascading risks across interconnected global systems.

• Resilience is defined as the ability to live and develop with change and uncertainty, encompassing the capacities to cope, adapt, and transform rather than simply returning to a previous state.
• The Earth's resilience is currently under severe strain, with seven of the nine planetary boundaries already breached, increasing the risk of crossing irreversible tipping points in forests, oceans, and ice sheets.
• Resilience requires a balance of three core capacities: coping (withstanding shocks without major disruption), adapting (adjusting to new conditions while maintaining core functions), and transforming (fundamentally redesigning systems to move away from unsustainable trajectories).
• Proactive investment in resilience provides a "triple dividend": it reduces the cost of disruptive events, stimulates economic growth by lowering risk, and delivers social and environmental benefits such as improved public health and biodiversity.
• Resilience is a continuous process and cycle of learning, where phases of rapid change (crises) can act as catalysts for innovation and institutional reform, while periods of gradual change allow for the scaling and consolidation of those innovations.
• Diversity is a fundamental requirement for resilience, including biodiversity, cognitive diversity (varied thinking styles), social diversity, and capital diversity. This provides systems with multiple options and the flexibility to avoid being locked into vulnerable pathways.
• Strong relationships—between people and with nature—are essential for the flow of trust, knowledge, and resources. However, hyperconnectivity in global systems can create a paradox where shocks ripple across borders more easily, leading to cascading failures.
• Effective resilience governance must be collaborative, polycentric, and adaptive to manage the inevitable trade-offs that occur when decisions in one sector or region impact others.
• Agency—the capacity to make and act upon decisions—is the engine that activates resilience. This agency must be supported through structural changes and equitable access to resources to prevent it from being concentrated only among powerful actors.
• Equitable resilience requires addressing power imbalances and historical injustices, such as colonialism and racism, to ensure that resilience interventions do not reinforce existing vulnerabilities or create new winners and losers.

APA

A., N., C., Q., M., N., A., J.-A., A., J., A., M., N., M., G., P., M., B., C., B., R., B., E., B., W., B., K., B., S.R., C., G., C., C., D. C., F., D., R., F., ... G., Z. (2025). Resilience Science Must-Knows. Global Resilience Partnership. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/rsmk_eng_digital.pdf

Chicago

A., Norström, Queiroz C., Nyström M., Jiménez-Aceituno A., Jonsson A., McFadden A., Milton N., et al. Resilience Science Must-Knows. Global Resilience Partnership, 2025. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/rsmk_eng_digital.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{a2025resilience, author = {A., Norström and C., Queiroz and M., Nyström and A., Jiménez-Aceituno and A., Jonsson and A., McFadden and N., Milton and G., Peterson and M., Barnes and C., Béné and R., Biggs and E., Boyd and W., Broadgate and K., Brown and S.R., Carpenter and G., Collins and C., de Coning and F., Denton and R., Ferreira and C., Folke and L., Gordon and M., Hamann and J., Hornberg and T., McPhearson and H., Nagendra and C., Ringler and J., Rockström and P., Romero-Lankao and M., Scheffer and F., Westley and G., Ziervogel}, title = {{Resilience Science Must-Knows}}, institution = {Global Resilience Partnership}, year = {2025}, url = {https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/rsmk_eng_digital.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }