RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PEACE

The paper advocates for a systemic shift in peacebuilding and development, moving away from linear causal models toward resilience thinking to address the interconnected risks of the Anthropocene. It highlights how climate change acts as a risk multiplier, potentially triggering violent conflict through forced migration and resource competition. The authors emphasize that systemic risks, such as hydrological teleconnections and global food system dependencies, require anticipatory management tools and a focus on social capital to sustain peace and prevent system collapse.

• Resilience thinking challenges traditional development and risk management by recognizing that local vulnerabilities are shaped by global and transboundary processes, meaning local resilience requires addressing distal drivers of instability.
• Climate change is projected to cause significant forced displacement, with the World Bank estimating more than 140 million new migrants in Latin America, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa by 2050.
• The Anthropocene is characterized by a 'Great Acceleration' of socio-economic and Earth system trends that have pushed the planet into conditions unseen in the last 1.2 million years, threatening the stability that allowed human societies to thrive during the Holocene.
• Systemic risks in the Anthropocene are hyper-connected, where a crisis in one domain, such as ecosystem health, can trigger unbounded risks across interdependent domains including financial systems, food and water supplies, and global climate.
• Hydrological teleconnections illustrate how sustainable agricultural improvements in one region can negatively impact another; for example, reduced irrigation in India could decrease rainfall in East Africa, potentially triggering migration and resource conflict.
• The global food system is increasingly vulnerable to systemic shocks due to the shift in aquaculture from wild-caught fish to crop-based feeds, making seafood production susceptible to land-based droughts and pest outbreaks.
• Effective peacebuilding in complex adaptive systems requires moving beyond linear theories of change to a relational approach based on repeated monitoring, experimentation, and the building of social capital to preempt conflict.

APA

Downing, A. S., Spijkers, J., Norström, A., & Preiser, R. (2020). RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PEACE. Global Resilience Partnership. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/resilience-and-sustainable-peace_grp_graid_background-paper-2020-002.pdf

Chicago

Downing, Andrea S., Jessica Spijkers, Albert Norström, and Rika Preiser. RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PEACE. Global Resilience Partnership, 2020. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/resilience-and-sustainable-peace_grp_graid_background-paper-2020-002.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Downing |first1=Andrea S. |last2=Spijkers |first2=Jessica |last3=Norström |first3=Albert |last4=Preiser |first4=Rika |title=RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PEACE |publisher=Global Resilience Partnership |date=February 2020 |url=https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/resilience-and-sustainable-peace_grp_graid_background-paper-2020-002.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{downing2020resilience, author = {Downing, Andrea S. and Spijkers, Jessica and Norström, Albert and Preiser, Rika}, title = {{RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PEACE}}, institution = {Global Resilience Partnership}, year = {2020}, month = feb, url = {https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/resilience-and-sustainable-peace_grp_graid_background-paper-2020-002.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }