ABSTRACT
The concept of ‘resilience’, formulated in the early 1970s by ecologist C. S. Holling, has since
proliferated far beyond the boundaries of ecosystem science to inform theory and policy in areas as
widespread as international development, financial regulation, terrorism risk management, urban
planning, and disaster recovery. As ‘a pervasive idiom of global governance’ (Walker and Cooper
2011, p. 144), ‘resilience’ reframes the problem of security as a matter of flexible adaptation in
an environment (both economic and ecological) characterised by turbulent and unpredictable
dynamics. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, some of the most innovative contemporary work
in resilience theory addresses the possibilities for adaptation to climate change. As the concept has
become foundational to contemporary thinking on climate change adaptation (Pelling 2011),
resilience has emerged as a strategy for the administration of life on a planetary scale.