What is equitable resilience?

This discussion brief by the Stockholm Environment Institute defines and operationalizes 'equitable resilience' to address the failure of traditional resilience concepts to account for power relations and social inequalities. Based on a review of 171 articles from 2005-2015, the authors propose a framework consisting of four interconnected elements—recognizing subjectivities, ensuring inclusion and representation, working across scales, and promoting transformative change—to ensure that climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction lead to socially just outcomes.

• The authors define equitable resilience as a form of human-environmental resilience that considers social vulnerability and the unequal access to power, resources, and knowledge. This approach prioritizes the perceptions of individuals regarding their own position within a system and their need for changed circumstances to prevent future power imbalances.
• Recognizing subjectivities is a core element of equitable resilience, as lived experiences and social categorizations (such as race, gender, and ethnicity) determine an individual's ability to mobilize attributes in their favor or, conversely, subject them to further disenfranchisement and risk.
• Inclusion and representation are critical for effective interventions; excluding specific social groups from decision-making regarding risk reduction and adaptation creates barriers to resilient transformation. The authors emphasize the need to include diverse social groups, different knowledge systems, and both formal and informal governing arrangements.
• Equitable resilience requires an understanding of geographical and temporal scales, as actions that increase resilience at one scale may increase vulnerability at another. For example, a coastal barrier protecting a city may cause problems for poorer outlying coastal communities that lack the capacity to adapt.
• Transformation is presented as a necessary alternative to simple adaptation when existing social-ecological systems degrade well-being or increase risks for certain groups. This process is inherently political and requires addressing systemic failures and the ways power is utilized.
• The authors argue that standard resilience indicators are insufficient on their own to achieve equitable outcomes. Practitioners must instead engage with critiques of resilience to avoid reinforcing existing power structures and resource disparities.

APA

Ensor, J., Matin, N., Forrester, J., & Davis, M. (2019). What is equitable resilience? Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/equitable-resilience-discussion-brief-ensor.pdf

Chicago

Ensor, Jonathan, Nilufar Matin, John Forrester, and Marion Davis. What is equitable resilience? Stockholm Environment Institute, 2019. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/equitable-resilience-discussion-brief-ensor.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ensor |first1=Jonathan |last2=Matin |first2=Nilufar |last3=Forrester |first3=John |last4=Davis |first4=Marion |title=What is equitable resilience? |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=March 2019 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/equitable-resilience-discussion-brief-ensor.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ensor2019what, author = {Ensor, Jonathan and Matin, Nilufar and Forrester, John and Davis, Marion}, title = {{What is equitable resilience?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2019}, month = mar, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/equitable-resilience-discussion-brief-ensor.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }