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Resilience Thinking and Sustainable Development

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Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education

Definition

Resilience thinking addresses the dynamics of complex social–environmental systems and explores how such systems can be managed in the face of disturbances – it is a paradigm beneficial toward the aims and objectives of sustainable development.

Introduction

The roots of resilience thinking can be traced to ecological research where system-level observations of the natural world and their underlying dynamics led toward new insights on the concept of resilience. In the natural world, shocks and disturbances are a constant reality of evolutionary life. Ecological systems, e.g., food webs, river basins, and grasslands, have developed an inherent ability to anticipate uncertainty, adapt, and maintain the resilience of critical functions. Learning from the collective wisdom of the natural world on resilience can aid our thinking toward sustainable development.

Sustainable development is a normative vision whereby our collective developmental needs of today do not endanger the...

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Correspondence to Ali Kharrazi .

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Kharrazi, A., Akiyama, T., Yarime, M. (2019). Resilience Thinking and Sustainable Development. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_324

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