1407. Resilience and Regeneration in a World in Crisis

Resilience thinking has been a central tenet of sustainability science for decades. Meanwhile, regeneration has become a buzzword in sustainability in recent years, and is being mentioned in everything from regenerative agriculture to regenerative business models.
A paper published in the journal Ambio concludes that resilience and regeneration are complementary concepts in sustainability science, forming the basis for a new vision of thriving societies and ecosystems and potentially guiding transformations toward sustainability.

Resilience, derived from the Latin "resilire," broadly means "to bounce back." Its most prominent contemporary usage refers to the ability to survive and thrive in the context of socio-ecological complexity. A system's ability to continue functioning over the long term, or resilience, arises from the interplay between exogenous factors and disturbances and its endogenous conditions. One particularly noteworthy phenomenon is the ability of different types of ecosystems to "flip" quickly and unexpectedly from a seemingly stable state to another, often undesirable, state. Such regime shifts occur when critical thresholds are exceeded or when endogenous conditions within the system undermine its resilience. Regime shifts have been observed in diverse ecosystem types, including coral reefs, savannas, and freshwater lakes.

By the 2000s, resilience was no longer limited to ecosystems but was increasingly applied to complex social-ecological systems. "Resilience thinking" was a comprehensive perspective that emerged during this time, describing an approach to social-ecological systems that took into account their complexity, including socio-ecological relationships, feedbacks, resilience, alternative stable states, and the potential for adaptation and transformation. It is most famously associated with Elinor Ostrom's framework for governance of shared resource systems. It is widely believed that systems in which decisions are made not by a single central actor but by multiple, partially interconnected actors at different levels of the system, foster resilience. Another important contribution of resilience thinking is its conceptual support for planetary boundaries, which suggest that regime shifts could threaten the safe operating space of humanity on Earth if thresholds for various drivers of change (e.g., land use change, climate change) are exceeded. Through the planetary boundaries framework, resilience has now become a mainstream concept in sustainability science.

Regeneration also derives from the Latin verb "regenerare," which broadly means "to create again." The most prominent regeneration theory in the context of sustainability emerged in urban development and design, aiming not to maintain systems ("sustain") but to foster positive relationships between people, the built environment, and the natural environment, thereby promoting the flourishing of both. Regeneration is currently found in literatures on agriculture, business, sociology, and education, and its core principles can be defined as follows:

First, most research on regeneration explicitly focuses on place, reversing degradation (rather than simply minimizing, mitigating, or compensating) in a place-based world, with an emphasis on the necessity and power of human agency to actually bring about such positive changes in system dynamics.

Second, regeneration targets the socio-ecological whole, seeking to renew underlying life-support systems and resources, rather than depleting them, their inherent vitality, viability, and capacity for socio-ecological co-evolution.

Third, conceptualizations of regeneration have become increasingly comprehensive, clearly defining the processes and dynamics at work within a system, the degenerative or regenerative momentum present within it, and the practices that contribute to either degenerative or regenerative momentum.

Fourth, regeneration explicitly suggests itself as an integrative framework that connects multiple disciplines and scales.

In summary, while resilience thinking has traditionally focused on mechanisms that help systems overcome difficult times, regeneration thinking emphasizes building inherently healthy systems capable of continuous renewal. Resilience and regeneration are complementary meta-concepts. Compared to resilience, regeneration is a new concept emerging in mainstream sustainability science, and it is not yet clear what it can and cannot do. Drawing on insights from both fields, the authors propose seven principles to guide proactive governance toward a resilient and regenerative future.

• Respect planetary boundaries.
• Aim to improve, not just maintain, the status quo.
• Recognize and strengthen dynamics that maintain or restore desired stable states.
• Address ongoing change and cross-scale interactions.
• Maximize regenerative dynamics and minimize degenerative dynamics.
• Promote reciprocal interactions between humans and non-humans (humans and nature).
• Identify and strengthen positive interactions across domains.

(Reference)
Fischer, J., Farny, S., Pacheco-Romero, M. et al. Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis. Ambio 55, 24–34 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02287-6

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki, Information Program