Resilience Science Must-Knows: Identifying System Gaps & Priorities

The initiative is a collaboration between the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Global Resilience Partnership, and Future Earth. We have employed an independent, rigorous multi-step methodology that incorporates perspectives from a range of resilience fields to identify overarching, essential, and relevant Resilience Science Must-Knows for decision-makers. 

• A global survey targeting scientists provides a horizon scanning of the best available science on the resilience of complex systems. 
• A literature review complementing our global survey captures insights and developments across resilience fields and highlights the extensive work published by scholars worldwide.
• A set of high-level validating workshops with diverse stakeholders, all with the capacity to enact change across scales and contexts. By inviting the perspectives and deep knowledge of policymakers, scientists, the private sector, NGOs, and community leaders to the dialogues, the survey and literature findings are unpacked and refined, ensuring that the Resilience Must-Knows are actionable and applicable to real-world decision-making.
• An Editorial Board consisting of esteemed Resilience scholars with a broad and intimate understanding of the field will work to bring the combined findings, lessons, and insights of the global survey, the literature review, and dialogues together. Distilling what the resilience science Must-Knows are.

The results will be published in a report launched at COP30 and detailed in a peer-reviewed scientific article. 

Why do we need Must-Knows of resilience science?  

In the last decades, the world has become more turbulent, with a sharp increase in the number and intensity of extreme events such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and pandemics ^1–6.  These simultaneous trends’ societal and human costs are high, with impacts hitting the most vulnerable people and regions. In 2022, 23 million people were severely impacted by extreme weather events, an increase of 53% compared to 2021 ⁷. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the loss of millions of human lives, disruptions in supply chains, and restricted mobility and access to food ^8,9. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of conflict-related deaths has nearly doubled, as has the number of forcibly displaced people ¹⁰. The simultaneous occurrence of climate change, conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic sparked one of the largest food crises of modern times, with 2.33 billion people currently suffering from food insecurity, an increase of millions of people compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic ^11,12. Although crises are not new in human history, the speed and scale through which the impacts of interconnected crises are quickly propagating across regions and sectors is unprecedented ^2,13. 

Following these developments, we face a new risk landscape ^1,13,14, and as this becomes reality, calls to build resilience are increasing. Cutting across research fields, sectors, and borders. We see calls for building and investing in climate resilience, food systems resilience, resilient infrastructure, resilient ecosystems, resilient cities, psychological resilience, and others. Highlighting the plural applications and recognising the urgency to integrate resilience towards the diverse changes our societies face ^5,15. The advances in resilience science and practice over the past decades offer insights into the attributes and types of intervention that can underpin and support a science-based approach to implement and build resilience for sustainable development ¹⁵. 

Resilience has been suggested to mean the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform in response to environmental and socioeconomic changes and uncertainties while ensuring and further developing its vital functions ¹⁵. The definition highlights the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of resilience, which is, in part, what makes it challenging to implement effectively. As a result, resilience and adaptation can appear unclear, impeding the essential change we need. To address these challenges, it is crucial that scientific research informs decision-making and practice and that these areas, in turn, respond to the needs of climate resilience action effectively.

Methodology: How we are doing it

We have called on resilience scholars from around the globe to lend their expertise and identify key insights and critical advances in resilience science that can aid decision-makers in addressing global sustainable development challenges. We employ a multi-step methodology to gather different perspectives and knowledge and translate the advancements that have been made in resilience science over the past decades. Doing so allows us to triangulate different data sources, this step provides a comprehensive understanding of what the resilience science Must-Knows are. The methodology is inspired by the framework developed by Future Earth in 2017, which has successfully supported global climate and biodiversity advances.

The Global Survey  

A qualitative global survey was sent out through the three organisations’ broad networks at the end of 2024 and is used as a horizon-scanning that identifies Must-Knows. The survey centres on one main question: What is a scientific insight, advance, concept, or framework in resilience research that you think is a ‘must-know’ for decision-makers?. We also asked what type of decision-maker needed this knowledge and what scientific articles or other knowledge products support their must-know. All the participants had the choice to contribute up to three Must-Knows. The survey has reached more than 1900 scholars across the globe, from Zimbabwe to Mexico, India, and Austria, and more than 120 have responded. We analyse the 150 suggested Must-Knows by thematically coding all the replies to identify and construct a list of core research insights. Via validation and triangulation, these are narrowed down, and their relevance for decision-makers and practitioners is determined. 

The Literature Review 

In addition to the survey, we are conducting a literature review on Resilience Science Must-Knows. First, we have identified highly influential scientific ”benchmark papers” from multiple fields of resilience. We have collected around 100 benchmark papers representing 20 resilience fields, from Urban Systems Resilience and Community Resilience to Resilience Assessments and Social-Ecological Resilience. To qualify, the papers must have citation scores above 100 (unless published after 2020), be highly relevant in their respective fields, and focus on complex systems resilience. Based on these benchmark papers, we will construct and quality test search strings. The search strings are used in scientific databases to retrieve thousands of articles. Next, we will scan and rank a short list of the most relevant papers, from which we will distil Must-Knows. The analysis will complement the Must-Knows identified through the survey, and together, these outcomes will serve as the foundational material for the Editorial Board and the Dialogues. 

Validating Workshops 

Validating workshops with decision-makers will invite policymakers, scientists, the private sector, NGOs, and community leaders to contribute their expertise to the Must-Knows. The workshops will identify priorities and areas for action, implementation, adaptation, and mitigation. The scientific insights from the survey and the literature will be brought to the workshops to inform the discussions, and in turn, the Must-Knows will be reviewed and informed by input from the workshops. It will ensure that the Must-Knows apply to real-world action and challenges and are informed by diverse knowledge types and perspectives that provide a holistic view of the challenges for informed action. The workshops are hosted in connection to other initiatives, conferences, or meetings, not to add additional travel and to build synergies with ongoing policy and practice processes. Three dedicated online workshops will invite stakeholders specifically from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. 

The Editorial Board

At the heart of the process is an Editorial Board characterised by research excellence in resilience science. The Editorial Board’s primary responsibility is prioritising and selecting the Must-Knows and the overall framing of the key messages. This task will build on and use the results from the global survey, literature review, and validating workshops. The board meets virtually from February to December, during which the results from the survey, literature review, and dialogues are used in workshops to distil the Must-Knows. The board provides high-level oversight and written feedback on drafts and is responsible for the report’s content. Each Editorial Board member performs a ‘supervisory’ function for at least one of the Must-Knows. 

Results: What we will achieve

Publish and launch a report with the Must-Knows of Resilience Science relevant for decision makers together with the Resilience Action Plan at COP30 in Brazil, together with a high-level event summarising the entire Road to Action: Transforming Resilience Science into Real-World Strategies process and the plan forward and beyond COP30. The longer version of the report will be launched at the Resilience Evidence Forum 2026. The scientific article detailing the process will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

References

1. Elsner, M., Atkinson, G. & Zahidi, S. Global Risks Report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2025/ (2025).

2. Cottrell, R. S. et al. Food production shocks across land and sea. Nat. Sustain. 2, 130–137 (2019).

3. Nyström, M. et al. Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Nature 575, 98–108 (2019).

4. Søgaard Jørgensen, P. et al. Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 379, 20220261 (2023).

5. Gupta, J. et al. A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations. Lancet Planet. Health 0, (2024).

6. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. & Ludwig, C. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. Anthr. Rev. 2, 81–98 (2015).

7. AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 — IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/.

8. Mukiibi, E. COVID-19 and the state of food security in Africa. Agric. Hum. Values 37, 627–628 (2020).

9. Zurayk, R. Pandemic and Food Security: A View from the Global South. J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev. 9, 17–21 (2020).

10. Cóbar, J. F. A. et al. Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk. https://www.sipri.org/publications/2022/other-publications/environment-peace-security-new-era-risk (2022).

11. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP & WHO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024. (FAO ; IFAD ; UNICEF ; WFP ; WHO ;, 2024).

12. Queiroz, C., Jonsson, A., Wood, A. & Norström, A. The Current Food Crisis: Building Resilience at the Nexus of Food Insecurity, Climate Change and Conflict. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/download/18.5171530718c4348e8b2f33/1702043204112/Food%20Crisis%20Brief_FINAL_VERSION-1.pdf (2023).

13. Joint Research Centre (European Commission). INFORM Report 2024: 10 Years of INFORM : Shared Evidence for Managing Crises and Disasters. (Publications Office of the European Union, 2024).

14. IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. (2022).15. Rockström, J. et al. Shaping a resilient future in response to COVID-19. Nat. Sustain. 6, 897–907 (2023).