Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship

Abstract

Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. Fundamental to this understanding has been a growing acknowledgment of the role of power in shaping resilience capacities and politics across cultural and geographic contexts. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience efforts, to move away from framings that risk reinforcing patterns of marginalization. Advancing a framework inspired by feminist theory and feminist political ecology, we analyze how recent work has presented, documented, and conceptualized how resilience intersects with patterns of inequity. In doing so, we illuminate the importance of knowledge, scale, and subject making in understanding the complex ways in which power and resilience become interlinked. We illustrate how overlooking such complexity may have serious consequences for how socio‐natural challenges and solutions are framed in resilience scholarship and, in turn, how resilience is planned and enacted in practice. Finally, we highlight how recent scholarship is advancing the understandings necessary to make sense of the shifting, contested, and power‐laden nature of resilience. Paying attention to, and building on, such complexity will allow scholarly work to illuminate the ways in which resilience is negotiated within inequitable processes and to address the marginalization of those continuing to bear the brunt of the climate crisis. This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development

The Role of Nature-Based Solutions in Supporting Social-Ecological Resilience for Climate Change Adaptation

“…One key example are power asymmetries. These can be a barrier to promoting inclusive and multi-knowledge decision-making, as well to ensuring benefits are distributed across communities in order to ensure equitable resilience (44,94,114). Moreover, we have focused on mechanisms at the local level in which NbS act.…”

“…Tradeoffs with how such changes to promote resilience may affect other SES objectives must also be navigated (15). Understanding all of these factors is an area of active research (44,48,115). These will need to be integrated to better inform how NbS can support resilience.…”

“…This is because people that make up an SES are not homogeneous and have differential power, agency, held values, and knowledges (42). These differences drive variation in resilience among people and how they are affected by resilience-building actions; however, such factors are rarely considered in resilience assessments (43)(44)(45). This can mask situations in which resilience for some is built at the expense of others, especially those afforded less power (46).…”

Multilevel intergroup conflict at the core of climate (in)justice: Psychological challenges and ways forward

“…Many climate‐related adversities are now inevitable due to past and minimally required future emissions (IPCC, 2022; Parry et al, 1998). Furthermore, developing countries and other vulnerable groups have less adaptation potential or resilience in response to these adversities (Garcia et al, 2022; IPCC, 2014; Mertz et al, 2009). Prioritizing adaptation would help build infrastructural resilience in these communities.…”

“…Importantly, these unjust variations in climate vulnerability are also exacerbated by power differentials across sociopolitical groups. Garcia et al (2022) review the role of power in shaping resilience capacities, noting how resilience intersects with historically entrenched patterns of inequity. They conceptualize resilience as "a socio-political process that is continuously negotiated between a range of actors with diverse needs, interests, and levels of authority."…”