A term often used is sustainable development. There are several hundred definitions of what sustainable development means. Some people argue that we need accelerating economic growth to achieve sustainable development while others mean that we need degrowth instead of growth. A lot of companies, organisations, governments, and others talk about how they work for sustainability, but they seldom define what they mean.
Because of this confusion we have decided to instead focus on the term resilience and the United Nations’ 17 Global Goals. The goals focus on every aspect of our society and by working with these goals we also cover environmental and climate goals. We define resilience as a system’s ability to deal with crisis and sudden events without going into a worse state.
One of the advantages with the term resilience is that it can be used on several levels. What does a person need to do to become more resilient? One can immediately see that things like eating healthy food, avoiding toxic chemicals, coping with stress, not destroying nature around us, spending time with friends and family, exercising and taking care of your body helps a person to better cope with oncoming crisis. But that also applies to a school, a society, a country, or the whole world for that matter. If we work with resilience we will automatically also work with environmental and climate goals.
Resilience includes relations, family, school and the wider community, and aspects of health and well-being as well as existential issues and agency. With regards to resilience and sustainability, we need to involve society as a whole. Individuals from different age groups, disciplines, trades, organisations, countries need to be involved in the process.
The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
