Shaping a Resilient Future in Response to COVID-19
Reconsider the definition of resilience and the role it can play in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Science today defines resilience as the capacity to live and develop with change and uncertainty, which is well beyond just the ability to ‘bounce back’ to the status quo. It involves the capacity to absorb shocks, avoid tipping points, navigate surprise and keep options alive, and the ability to innovate and transform in the face of crises and traps.
Five Underlying Attributes
- Diversity
- Redundancy
- Connectivity
- Inclusivity and equity
- Adaptive learning
There is a mismatch between the talk of resilience recovery after COVID-19 and the latest science, which calls for major efforts to align resilience thinking with sustainable development action.
Recent advances in resilience science and practice provide insights on the attributes and types of intervention that can underpin truly resilient, and transformative, sustainable development that is integrated with our life-supporting biosphere. Now is the moment to start translating this progress into broader-scale action that builds resilient economies, societies and ecosystems in a post-COVID-19 world.
To support this, the article provides a clear operational definition of resilience and presents the five key attributes that underpin this definition. The erosion of these five attributes has paved the way for fragility towards systemic risks such as COVID-19. It presents a suite of evidence-based interventions that can enhance these attributes and operationalize response strategies towards a resilient and sustainable post-pandemic world. Many of these interventions have multiple benefits, and while they can lead to resilience trade-offs, the article showcases how their implementation is already occurring in different contexts, scales and sectors around the world.