Climate change adaptation

The fact that climate resilience encompasses a dual function, both to absorb impacts and to self-renew, is the main means by which it can be differentiated from the concept of climate adaptation. In general, adaptation is viewed as a group of processes and actions that help a system absorb changes that have already occurred or can be predicted to occur in the future. For the specific case of environmental change and climate adaptation, many argue that adaptation should be strictly defined as encompassing only active decision-making processes and actions; in other words, deliberate changes made in response to climate change.[9]​.

Of course, this characterization is highly debatable: after all, adaptation can also be used to describe natural and involuntary processes by which organisms, populations, ecosystems, and perhaps even socioecological systems evolve after the application of certain external stresses. However, for the purposes of differentiating climate adaptation and climate resilience from a policy-making perspective, we can contrast the active, actor-centered notion of adaptation with resilience, which would be a more systems-based approach to building socio-ecological networks that are inherently capable of not only absorbing changes, but also using those changes to develop more efficient configurations.

Vulnerability to climate change

If the definition of resilience is the ability to recover from a negative event, in this case climate change, then talking about advance preparations and strategies for recovery (also known as adaptations), as well as populations that are more or less capable of developing and implementing a resilience strategy (also known as vulnerable populations) are essential. This is framed within the supposed detrimental impacts of climate change on ecosystems and ecosystem services.[10]​.

It is important to note that efforts to improve resilience can lead to adaptive, maladaptive outcomes, or even both. When considering inequality with adaptation, we can focus on distributive justice, which is intended to maximize benefits and promote the participation of the most disadvantaged communities. Identifying a community or population as vulnerable can generate bias due to the different factors that are negotiated in the term vulnerable. Outcome vulnerability (focused on quantitative measures) and contextual vulnerability (focused on qualitative measures) are two aspects that must be considered in unison to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the vulnerable state of a community. Because a population's level of vulnerability is constantly changing (as are the threats and impacts of climate change), efforts to provide adaptation strategies must offer multiple opportunities and outcomes.[11]​

Climate change vulnerability (or climate vulnerability or climate risk vulnerability) is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be negatively affected" by climate change. It can be applied to humans but also to natural systems (ecosystems). Vulnerability to climate change encompasses “a range of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.”[12]​  Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability differs within communities and between societies, regions and countries, and can change over time.[12]​ Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change in 2021.[12]​ Human and ecosystem vulnerability is interdependent.[12]​.

The vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change is driven by certain unsustainable development patterns such as "unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and current patterns of inequity such as colonialism and governance."[12]​ Therefore, vulnerability is greatest in places with "poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods (e.g. smallholder farmers, shepherds, fishing communities)".[12]​.

Contenido

La construcción de la resiliencia climática es una tarea muy integral que involucra una variedad ecléctica de actores y agentes: individuos, organizaciones comunitarias, organismos micropolíticos, corporaciones, gobiernos a nivel local, estatal y nacional, así como organizaciones internacionales.En esencia, acciones que refuerzan la resiliencia climática son aquellas que realzarán la adaptación de la capacidad social, industrial, e infraestructuras medioambientales que pueden mitigar los efectos del cambio climático.[12]​ Actualmente, la búsqueda señala que el mayor indicador de resiliencia climática exitosa son los esfuerzos a toda escala de una red preexistente bien desarrollada de instituciones sociales, políticas, económicas y financieras que ya está posicionada para asumir de manera efectiva el trabajo de identificar y abordar los problemas y riesgos que plantea el cambio climático. Las ciudades, los estados y las naciones que ya han desarrollado tales redes, como se esperaba, generalmente tendrán ingresos netos y PIB mucho más altos.[24]​.

Por lo tanto, se puede ver que integrado dentro de la tarea de construir resiliencia climática a cualquier escala, estará la superación de las inequidades socioeconómicas macroscópicas: en muchos sentidos, facilitar la construcción de comunidades resilientes al clima en todo el mundo requerirá que las agencias nacionales e internacionales aborden los problemas de pobreza global, desarrollo industrial y justicia alimentaria . Sin embargo, esto no significa que las acciones para mejorar la resiliencia climática no se puedan tomar en tiempo real en todos los niveles, aunque la evidencia sugiere que las ciudades y naciones más resilientes al clima han acumulado esta resiliencia a través de sus respuestas a desastres meteorológicos anteriores. Quizás aún más importante, la evidencia empírica sugiere que la creación de estructuras resistentes al clima depende de una serie de reformas sociales y ambientales que solo se aprobaron con éxito debido a la presencia de ciertas estructuras sociopolíticas como la democracia, los movimientos activistas y la descentralización del gobierno.[25]​.

Climate resilience framework

The climate resilience framework can better equip governments and policymakers to develop sustainable solutions that combat the effects of climate change. To start with, climate resilience establishes the idea of ​​multi-stable social-ecological systems (social-ecological systems can in fact stabilize a multitude of possible states). Second, climate resilience has played a critical role in emphasizing the importance of preventive action when evaluating the effects of climate change. Although adaptation will always be a key consideration, making changes after the fact has a limited ability to help communities and nations deal with climate change. To build climate resilience, governments and policymakers can take more comprehensive stances to mitigate the damage caused by climate change impacts before they occur.[26]​[27]​ Finally, a climate resilience perspective encourages greater connectivity across scales of systems. Creating adaptation mechanisms that occur in isolation at the local, state, or national level can leave the overall socioecological system vulnerable. A resilience-based framework would require many more cross-talk and the creation of environmental protections that are generated and implemented more holistically.[26][28]​.

Climate resilient development

Climate resilient development "integrates adaptation measures and their enabling conditions with mitigation to promote sustainable development for all".[29]​ It involves issues of equity and system transitions, and includes adaptations for human, ecosystem and planetary health.[29]​ Climate resilient development is facilitated by developing partnerships with traditionally marginalized groups, including women, youth, indigenous peoples, local communities and ethnic minorities.[29]​.

Climate resilient infrastructure

Infrastructure failures can have wide-ranging consequences that extend beyond the site of the original event and for a considerable duration after the immediate failure. Additionally, increased interdependence of the trusted infrastructure system, in combination with the effects of climate change and population growth, contribute to increased vulnerability and exposure, and a higher likelihood of catastrophic failures.[30]​ To reduce this vulnerability, and in recognition of limited resources and future uncertainty about climate projections, new and existing durable infrastructure must undergo risk-based economic and engineering analysis to allocate resources and appropriately design for climate resilience.[31]​.

Incorporating climate projections into building and infrastructure design standards, investment and evaluation criteria, and model building codes is not common today.[32] Public entities have developed some resilience guidelines and risk-informed frameworks. Such manuals can provide guidance for adaptive design methods, extreme characterization, development of flood design criteria, flood load calculation, and application of adaptive risk management principles for the most severe climate/meteorological extremes.[33]​ An example is the New York City "Climate Resilience Design Guidelines."[34]​.

Disaster Preparedness Protocols

At larger government levels, broad programs are being implemented to improve climate resilience through increased disaster preparedness. For example, in cases like Norway, it includes the development of more sensitive and longer-range early warning systems for extreme weather events, the creation of emergency electrical power sources, improved public transportation systems, and more.[35]​.

Climate resilient agriculture

Multiple returns to climate resilient agriculture will be delayed. One of India's strategies is responsive crop monitoring, it cannot be planned. While the government is working to create systems to guide farmers in specific situations, responsive agriculture depends on the direction of climate change. Additionally, investing in tolerant livestock breeds will decrease production in the short term. The appeal of tolerant livestock lies in their ability to withstand changes in the environment as climate change worsens.[36] These immediate uncertainties are part of India's goal of promoting environmental health to support long-term agricultural production. Supply and demand management can be mentioned among all the ways to increase agricultural resilience.[37]​.

Similar initiatives are implemented on a local scale around the world. In the United States, the New York State Department of Agriculture began its Climate Resilient Agriculture program. This program aims to reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture and mitigate the impact of agriculture on climate change. It promotes ideas similar to those in India, including water management and promoting soil health. Climate resilient programming also provides funding to help farmers reduce methane and properly store agricultural waste. New York State's focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions balances developing climate-resilient agriculture and slowing climate change.[38]​.

Government support of this intersection is used to support change among individual farmers. As climate variability increases, the costs associated with promoting climate resilience increase in comparison. The risk of investing in tolerant breeds, soil management and proper environmental care can also be discouraging for small farmers. These people have reported hesitation to implement suggested practices, such as reducing herd size to promote soil-healthy grazing. The popularity of climate resilient agriculture among subsistence farmers helps facilitate the transition to a climate resilient system. In addition to developing new techniques, farmers can use techniques they already knew, such as no-till farming and cover crops.[39]​.

Governments and development agencies are spending increasing amounts of funding to support resilience-building interventions. Measuring resilience can make valuable contributions to guiding resource allocations toward resilience development. This includes: specific identification of critical points of vulnerability; better understanding of the drivers of resilience; and tools to infer the impact and effectiveness of resilience-building interventions. In recent years, a large number of resilience measurement tools have emerged, offering ways to track and measure resilience at a variety of scales, from individuals and households to communities and nations.[40]​.

Efforts to measure climate resilience currently face a number of technical challenges. First, the definition of resilience is highly contested, making it difficult to choose appropriate characteristics and indicators to track. Second, the resilience of households or communities cannot be measured with a single observable metric. Resilience is made up of a number of processes and characteristics, many of which are intangible and difficult to observe (such as social capital "Social capital (sociology)").[41]​ As a result, many resilience toolkits resort to using large lists of proxy indicators.[42]​.

Most recent initiatives to measure resilience in rural development contexts share two shortcomings: complexity and high cost.[43]​ USAID published a field guide for assessing climate resilience in smallholder supply chains.[44]​.

Most objective approaches use fixed and transparent definitions of resilience and allow different groups of people to be compared through standardized metrics. However, since many resilience processes and capabilities are intangible, objective approaches rely heavily on crude surrogates. Examples of commonly used objective measures include Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis and Livelihood Change over Time.[45]​[42]​.

Subjective approaches to resilience measurement take a contrasting view. They assume that people have a valid understanding of their own resilience and seek to take perceptions into account in the measurement process.[41] They challenge the notion that experts are best suited to evaluate other people's lives. Subjective approaches use people's own judgment about what constitutes resilience and allows them to self-assess accordingly. An example is the subjectively evaluated resilience score.[46]​.

The theoretical basis for many of the ideas central to climate resilience has actually existed since the 1960s. Originally an idea defined for strictly ecological systems, resilience "Resilience (ecology)") in ecology was initially outlined by C.S. Holling as the ability of ecological systems and the relationships within those systems to persist and absorb changes in "state variables, driving variables, and parameters"[47] This definition helped form the basis of the notion of ecological equilibrium: the idea that the behavior of natural ecosystems is dictated by a homeostatic drive toward some stable fixed point. Under this school of thought (which maintained a fairly dominant state during this period), ecosystems were perceived to respond to disturbances largely through negative feedback systems: if there is a change, the ecosystem would act to mitigate that change as much as possible and attempt to return to its previous state.

As more scientific research was conducted in ecological adaptation and natural resource management, it became clear that natural systems were often subject to dynamic and transient behaviors that changed the way they reacted to significant changes in state variables: rather than regressing toward a predetermined state of equilibrium, the absorbed change was leveraged to establish a new baseline under which to operate. Instead of minimizing imposed changes, ecosystems could integrate and manage those changes and use them to drive the evolution of new features. This new perspective on resilience as a concept that inherently works synergistically with elements of uncertainty and entropy first began to facilitate changes in the field of adaptive management and environmental resources, through work the foundation of which was built by Holling and his colleagues once again.[4][48]​.

In the mid-1970s, resilience began to gain momentum as an idea in anthropology, cultural theory, and other social sciences. There was significant work in these relatively non-traditional fields that helped facilitate the evolution of the resilience perspective as a whole. Part of the reason why resilience began to move away from a balance-focused view and towards a more flexible and malleable description of social-ecological systems was due to work such as that of Andrew Vayda and Bonnie McCay in the field of social anthropology, where more modern versions of resilience were deployed to challenge traditional ideals of cultural dynamics.[49]​.

Finally, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, resilience had fundamentally changed as a theoretical framework. Not only was it now applicable to social-ecological systems, but more importantly, resilience now incorporated and emphasized ideas of management, integration and utilization of change rather than simply describing reactions to change. Resilience was no longer just about absorbing impacts, but also about harnessing changes caused by external stresses to catalyze the evolution of the socio-ecological system in question.

Climate change adaptation

The fact that climate resilience encompasses a dual function, both to absorb impacts and to self-renew, is the main means by which it can be differentiated from the concept of climate adaptation. In general, adaptation is viewed as a group of processes and actions that help a system absorb changes that have already occurred or can be predicted to occur in the future. For the specific case of environmental change and climate adaptation, many argue that adaptation should be strictly defined as encompassing only active decision-making processes and actions; in other words, deliberate changes made in response to climate change.[9]​.

Of course, this characterization is highly debatable: after all, adaptation can also be used to describe natural and involuntary processes by which organisms, populations, ecosystems, and perhaps even socioecological systems evolve after the application of certain external stresses. However, for the purposes of differentiating climate adaptation and climate resilience from a policy-making perspective, we can contrast the active, actor-centered notion of adaptation with resilience, which would be a more systems-based approach to building socio-ecological networks that are inherently capable of not only absorbing changes, but also using those changes to develop more efficient configurations.

Vulnerability to climate change

If the definition of resilience is the ability to recover from a negative event, in this case climate change, then talking about advance preparations and strategies for recovery (also known as adaptations), as well as populations that are more or less capable of developing and implementing a resilience strategy (also known as vulnerable populations) are essential. This is framed within the supposed detrimental impacts of climate change on ecosystems and ecosystem services.[10]​.

It is important to note that efforts to improve resilience can lead to adaptive, maladaptive outcomes, or even both. When considering inequality with adaptation, we can focus on distributive justice, which is intended to maximize benefits and promote the participation of the most disadvantaged communities. Identifying a community or population as vulnerable can generate bias due to the different factors that are negotiated in the term vulnerable. Outcome vulnerability (focused on quantitative measures) and contextual vulnerability (focused on qualitative measures) are two aspects that must be considered in unison to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the vulnerable state of a community. Because a population's level of vulnerability is constantly changing (as are the threats and impacts of climate change), efforts to provide adaptation strategies must offer multiple opportunities and outcomes.[11]​

Climate change vulnerability (or climate vulnerability or climate risk vulnerability) is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be negatively affected" by climate change. It can be applied to humans but also to natural systems (ecosystems). Vulnerability to climate change encompasses “a range of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.”[12]​  Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability differs within communities and between societies, regions and countries, and can change over time.[12]​ Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change in 2021.[12]​ Human and ecosystem vulnerability is interdependent.[12]​.

The vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change is driven by certain unsustainable development patterns such as "unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and current patterns of inequity such as colonialism and governance."[12]​ Therefore, vulnerability is greatest in places with "poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods (e.g. smallholder farmers, shepherds, fishing communities)".[12]​.

Contenido

La construcción de la resiliencia climática es una tarea muy integral que involucra una variedad ecléctica de actores y agentes: individuos, organizaciones comunitarias, organismos micropolíticos, corporaciones, gobiernos a nivel local, estatal y nacional, así como organizaciones internacionales.En esencia, acciones que refuerzan la resiliencia climática son aquellas que realzarán la adaptación de la capacidad social, industrial, e infraestructuras medioambientales que pueden mitigar los efectos del cambio climático.[12]​ Actualmente, la búsqueda señala que el mayor indicador de resiliencia climática exitosa son los esfuerzos a toda escala de una red preexistente bien desarrollada de instituciones sociales, políticas, económicas y financieras que ya está posicionada para asumir de manera efectiva el trabajo de identificar y abordar los problemas y riesgos que plantea el cambio climático. Las ciudades, los estados y las naciones que ya han desarrollado tales redes, como se esperaba, generalmente tendrán ingresos netos y PIB mucho más altos.[24]​.

Por lo tanto, se puede ver que integrado dentro de la tarea de construir resiliencia climática a cualquier escala, estará la superación de las inequidades socioeconómicas macroscópicas: en muchos sentidos, facilitar la construcción de comunidades resilientes al clima en todo el mundo requerirá que las agencias nacionales e internacionales aborden los problemas de pobreza global, desarrollo industrial y justicia alimentaria . Sin embargo, esto no significa que las acciones para mejorar la resiliencia climática no se puedan tomar en tiempo real en todos los niveles, aunque la evidencia sugiere que las ciudades y naciones más resilientes al clima han acumulado esta resiliencia a través de sus respuestas a desastres meteorológicos anteriores. Quizás aún más importante, la evidencia empírica sugiere que la creación de estructuras resistentes al clima depende de una serie de reformas sociales y ambientales que solo se aprobaron con éxito debido a la presencia de ciertas estructuras sociopolíticas como la democracia, los movimientos activistas y la descentralización del gobierno.[25]​.

Climate resilience framework

The climate resilience framework can better equip governments and policymakers to develop sustainable solutions that combat the effects of climate change. To start with, climate resilience establishes the idea of ​​multi-stable social-ecological systems (social-ecological systems can in fact stabilize a multitude of possible states). Second, climate resilience has played a critical role in emphasizing the importance of preventive action when evaluating the effects of climate change. Although adaptation will always be a key consideration, making changes after the fact has a limited ability to help communities and nations deal with climate change. To build climate resilience, governments and policymakers can take more comprehensive stances to mitigate the damage caused by climate change impacts before they occur.[26]​[27]​ Finally, a climate resilience perspective encourages greater connectivity across scales of systems. Creating adaptation mechanisms that occur in isolation at the local, state, or national level can leave the overall socioecological system vulnerable. A resilience-based framework would require many more cross-talk and the creation of environmental protections that are generated and implemented more holistically.[26][28]​.

Climate resilient development

Climate resilient development "integrates adaptation measures and their enabling conditions with mitigation to promote sustainable development for all".[29]​ It involves issues of equity and system transitions, and includes adaptations for human, ecosystem and planetary health.[29]​ Climate resilient development is facilitated by developing partnerships with traditionally marginalized groups, including women, youth, indigenous peoples, local communities and ethnic minorities.[29]​.

Climate resilient infrastructure

Infrastructure failures can have wide-ranging consequences that extend beyond the site of the original event and for a considerable duration after the immediate failure. Additionally, increased interdependence of the trusted infrastructure system, in combination with the effects of climate change and population growth, contribute to increased vulnerability and exposure, and a higher likelihood of catastrophic failures.[30]​ To reduce this vulnerability, and in recognition of limited resources and future uncertainty about climate projections, new and existing durable infrastructure must undergo risk-based economic and engineering analysis to allocate resources and appropriately design for climate resilience.[31]​.

Incorporating climate projections into building and infrastructure design standards, investment and evaluation criteria, and model building codes is not common today.[32] Public entities have developed some resilience guidelines and risk-informed frameworks. Such manuals can provide guidance for adaptive design methods, extreme characterization, development of flood design criteria, flood load calculation, and application of adaptive risk management principles for the most severe climate/meteorological extremes.[33]​ An example is the New York City "Climate Resilience Design Guidelines."[34]​.

Disaster Preparedness Protocols

At larger government levels, broad programs are being implemented to improve climate resilience through increased disaster preparedness. For example, in cases like Norway, it includes the development of more sensitive and longer-range early warning systems for extreme weather events, the creation of emergency electrical power sources, improved public transportation systems, and more.[35]​.

Climate resilient agriculture

Multiple returns to climate resilient agriculture will be delayed. One of India's strategies is responsive crop monitoring, it cannot be planned. While the government is working to create systems to guide farmers in specific situations, responsive agriculture depends on the direction of climate change. Additionally, investing in tolerant livestock breeds will decrease production in the short term. The appeal of tolerant livestock lies in their ability to withstand changes in the environment as climate change worsens.[36] These immediate uncertainties are part of India's goal of promoting environmental health to support long-term agricultural production. Supply and demand management can be mentioned among all the ways to increase agricultural resilience.[37]​.

Similar initiatives are implemented on a local scale around the world. In the United States, the New York State Department of Agriculture began its Climate Resilient Agriculture program. This program aims to reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture and mitigate the impact of agriculture on climate change. It promotes ideas similar to those in India, including water management and promoting soil health. Climate resilient programming also provides funding to help farmers reduce methane and properly store agricultural waste. New York State's focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions balances developing climate-resilient agriculture and slowing climate change.[38]​.

Government support of this intersection is used to support change among individual farmers. As climate variability increases, the costs associated with promoting climate resilience increase in comparison. The risk of investing in tolerant breeds, soil management and proper environmental care can also be discouraging for small farmers. These people have reported hesitation to implement suggested practices, such as reducing herd size to promote soil-healthy grazing. The popularity of climate resilient agriculture among subsistence farmers helps facilitate the transition to a climate resilient system. In addition to developing new techniques, farmers can use techniques they already knew, such as no-till farming and cover crops.[39]​.

Governments and development agencies are spending increasing amounts of funding to support resilience-building interventions. Measuring resilience can make valuable contributions to guiding resource allocations toward resilience development. This includes: specific identification of critical points of vulnerability; better understanding of the drivers of resilience; and tools to infer the impact and effectiveness of resilience-building interventions. In recent years, a large number of resilience measurement tools have emerged, offering ways to track and measure resilience at a variety of scales, from individuals and households to communities and nations.[40]​.

Efforts to measure climate resilience currently face a number of technical challenges. First, the definition of resilience is highly contested, making it difficult to choose appropriate characteristics and indicators to track. Second, the resilience of households or communities cannot be measured with a single observable metric. Resilience is made up of a number of processes and characteristics, many of which are intangible and difficult to observe (such as social capital "Social capital (sociology)").[41]​ As a result, many resilience toolkits resort to using large lists of proxy indicators.[42]​.

Most recent initiatives to measure resilience in rural development contexts share two shortcomings: complexity and high cost.[43]​ USAID published a field guide for assessing climate resilience in smallholder supply chains.[44]​.

Most objective approaches use fixed and transparent definitions of resilience and allow different groups of people to be compared through standardized metrics. However, since many resilience processes and capabilities are intangible, objective approaches rely heavily on crude surrogates. Examples of commonly used objective measures include Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis and Livelihood Change over Time.[45]​[42]​.

Subjective approaches to resilience measurement take a contrasting view. They assume that people have a valid understanding of their own resilience and seek to take perceptions into account in the measurement process.[41] They challenge the notion that experts are best suited to evaluate other people's lives. Subjective approaches use people's own judgment about what constitutes resilience and allows them to self-assess accordingly. An example is the subjectively evaluated resilience score.[46]​.

The theoretical basis for many of the ideas central to climate resilience has actually existed since the 1960s. Originally an idea defined for strictly ecological systems, resilience "Resilience (ecology)") in ecology was initially outlined by C.S. Holling as the ability of ecological systems and the relationships within those systems to persist and absorb changes in "state variables, driving variables, and parameters"[47] This definition helped form the basis of the notion of ecological equilibrium: the idea that the behavior of natural ecosystems is dictated by a homeostatic drive toward some stable fixed point. Under this school of thought (which maintained a fairly dominant state during this period), ecosystems were perceived to respond to disturbances largely through negative feedback systems: if there is a change, the ecosystem would act to mitigate that change as much as possible and attempt to return to its previous state.

As more scientific research was conducted in ecological adaptation and natural resource management, it became clear that natural systems were often subject to dynamic and transient behaviors that changed the way they reacted to significant changes in state variables: rather than regressing toward a predetermined state of equilibrium, the absorbed change was leveraged to establish a new baseline under which to operate. Instead of minimizing imposed changes, ecosystems could integrate and manage those changes and use them to drive the evolution of new features. This new perspective on resilience as a concept that inherently works synergistically with elements of uncertainty and entropy first began to facilitate changes in the field of adaptive management and environmental resources, through work the foundation of which was built by Holling and his colleagues once again.[4][48]​.

In the mid-1970s, resilience began to gain momentum as an idea in anthropology, cultural theory, and other social sciences. There was significant work in these relatively non-traditional fields that helped facilitate the evolution of the resilience perspective as a whole. Part of the reason why resilience began to move away from a balance-focused view and towards a more flexible and malleable description of social-ecological systems was due to work such as that of Andrew Vayda and Bonnie McCay in the field of social anthropology, where more modern versions of resilience were deployed to challenge traditional ideals of cultural dynamics.[49]​.

Finally, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, resilience had fundamentally changed as a theoretical framework. Not only was it now applicable to social-ecological systems, but more importantly, resilience now incorporated and emphasized ideas of management, integration and utilization of change rather than simply describing reactions to change. Resilience was no longer just about absorbing impacts, but also about harnessing changes caused by external stresses to catalyze the evolution of the socio-ecological system in question.