Introduction

My motivation to write this book stems from my engagement with ‘resilience thinking’ primarily from the perspective of environmental change, and finding some of its fundamental premises really exciting, but realising that few of these had been widely applied in international development. I understand international development as the process of managing and shaping change to enhance human welfare and well-being and to overcome poverty. Resilience struck me as being of fundamental importance to conceptualising and effecting sustainable development. Resilience thinking – encompassing ideas from complex adaptive systems – can bring four important dimensions to the understanding of sustainability and formulation of sustainable development.