Resilience Science Must-Knows

The report outlines nine 'Must-Knows' of resilience science, defining resilience as the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform. It argues that resilience is a continuous process of learning and innovation, requiring diversity in knowledge and nature, strong social-ecological relationships, and the active management of trade-offs. The document emphasizes that investing in resilience provides a 'triple dividend' by avoiding losses, boosting economies, and strengthening societies, while stressing that equitable resilience requires addressing power imbalances and historical injustices.

• Resilience is defined as the capacity to live and develop amidst change and uncertainty, requiring the ability to cope, adapt, and transform rather than simply returning to a previous state.
• The Earth's resilience is currently at risk due to human activity in the Anthropocene, with six of nine planetary boundaries already exceeded, pushing forests, oceans, and ice caps toward irreversible tipping points.
• Resilience involves three core capacities: coping (the ability to persist and recover from shocks without major rupture), adaptation (adjusting to new conditions while maintaining essential functions), and transformation (fundamentally redesigning how systems function when existing trajectories are unsustainable or unjust).
• Investing in resilience yields a 'triple dividend': it reduces the costs of disruptive events, stimulates economic growth by reducing risk, and generates social and environmental benefits such as improved public health and increased biodiversity.
• Resilience is a cyclical process of learning and innovation that alternates between phases of rapid change (which can catalyze innovation) and gradual change (where innovations are consolidated but risk becoming rigid).
• Diversity is a fundamental pillar of resilience, encompassing functional, capital, social, and cognitive diversity, which provides systems with multiple response options and prevents vulnerability to a single type of failure.
• Strong relationships between people and with nature are essential for resilience, though 'hyperconnectivity' driven by global trade and land-use changes can create new risks by allowing shocks to propagate rapidly across borders.
• Effective resilience governance requires managing trade-offs through collaborative, polycentric, and adaptive approaches, as decisions in one area often create cascading effects or conflicts in others.
• Agency—the ability to make and implement decisions—is the trigger for resilience, but it must be supported by structural changes and equitable access to resources to avoid being concentrated in the hands of powerful actors.
• Equitable resilience requires directly confronting social inequalities, power imbalances, and historical injustices, such as colonialism and racism, to ensure that resilience initiatives do not reinforce existing vulnerabilities.

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_pt_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_pt_digital.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=A. |first1=Norström |last2=C. |first2=Queiroz |last3=M. |first3=Nyström |last4=A. |first4=Jiménez-Aceituno |last5=A. |first5=Jonsson |last6=A. |first6=McFadden |last7=N. |first7=Milton |last8=G. |first8=Peterson |last9=M. |first9=Barnes |display-authors=etal |title=Resilience Science Must-Knows |publisher=Global Resilience Partnership |date=2025 |url=https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/rsmk_pt_digital.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

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_pt_digital.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }