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.