Resilience and Sustainable Development: Theory of resilience, systems thinking and adaptive governance

 Basic information on SD  Country profiles  Quarterly reports  Policy briefs  Case studies  Conference papers  Workshop papers  Getting in touch with us The European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN) is an informal network of public administrators and other experts who deal with sustainable development strategies and policies. The network covers all 27 EU Member States, plus other European countries. The ESDN is active in promoting sustainable development and facilitating the exchange of good practices in Europe and gives advice to policy-makers at the European and national levels. This ESDN Quarterly Report (QR) provides a condensed overview of the concept of resilience. Despite the complexity of the theory behind resilience, this QR tries to communicate the main notions behind this concept in a way that is understandable and not overly technical. The intention of this QR is to serve as a guide through the concept of resilience. The report does not aim at being exhaustive but intends to provide an overview on the links which are particularly relevant for sustainable development (SD) in general and SD governance in particular. A multitude of diverse sources have been used, mainly from the academic literature. It has to be mentioned the significant and decisive role that the Resilience Alliance has in providing extensive knowledge: the website that they are running, is an exceptionally good source of information for those who are interested and want to deepen their knowledge of resilience. Additionally, among all the scientific publications cited throughout the report, a special mention goes to the book by Walker and Salt (2006) entitled " Resilience thinking: sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world " , which is very much suggested as a practical source of information on resilience. As a first chapter, an executive summary is provided with a short overview of the report with the essential notions that are depicted throughout the QR. The second chapter then introduces the concept of resilience and gives an extensive background on the notions behind it. It intends to provide guidance, especially to understand the linkages between the concept of resilience and sustainable development, and the importance of resilience and systems thinking for policy-makers and for those who work on SD governance. The third chapter summarizes the relationships among resilience, society, governance and policy. Therefore, the concept of 'adaptive governance' is advanced as a more appropriate way to deal with …