Sustainable Development and Transformative Resilience: A Two-Way Link

This paper outlines the dynamic leading societies toward a sustainable development path in case of shocks, structural changes, and transitions. By decomposing key societal components and assigning a function to households, individuals and institutions, it integrates all the elements to show a complex system characterized by non-linearities and tipping points, with the goal to shape societal wellbeing for the current and future generations. In this perspective, resilience is intertwined with sustainability as it represents the ability to cope with distress and to find the right balance between absorption, adaptation, and transformation capacities in order to stay on or go toward a sustainable development path. Resilience is not always an inner ability, but it can be developed and sustained through policy interventions, to enhance capacities and reduce vulnerabilities. Prevention, preparation, protection, promotion, and transformation measures can steer countries, as well as individuals and companies, toward the sustainable pattern. When shocks occur, transformative resilience is key for allowing our society to “bounce forward” (and not “back”) toward a better and more sustainable development path. The paper brings some concrete examples of resilience measures adopted by the European Union over the last years.