Resilience

The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) understands resilience as ‘the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions’ (UNISDR, 2009).

Therefore, resilience refers to a social or ecological system’s ability to endure impacts and absorb shocks without this causing irreversible changes in its structure or functions. From a socio-ecological resilience point of view, this implies resisting, adapting to, and recovering in a just and equitable way, without negatively affecting the most vulnerable populations. It also entails respecting the planet’s ecosystems.

Ecological resilience refers to an ecological system’s ability to recover its properties after experiencing modifications from a disturbance.

This term is especially used in academia. However, in the context of climate change and global change, it often refers to building resilient cities and societies that can adapt to and mitigate these phenomena.