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Sea defence policy in England has proven contentious in the early twenty-first century, with government willing to defend the coast only where it is considered cost effective and not minded to compensate people for any resulting abandonment of homes. Additional focus is brought to this position by the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which reflect a growing emphasis on climate change effects and other environmental hazards, and the wellbeing of the current generation and those to come. This requires policy makers to seek to balance economic, social and environmental dimensions, and to tackle inequalities; with a central commitment of the goals to "leave no one behind". Subsequent to publication of the SDGs, England was promised a revolution in the government's approach to Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM). This paper seeks to understand the nature of this revolution with particular regard to extant issues around just governance. It finds that policy fails to deal with issues over the local acceptability of proposals for change and the bearing of risk, and instead lies principally in the elevation of the problematic concept of resilience and an accompanying ambivalence towards ideas of sustainability and sustainable development. International agreement that compensation should be paid to those countries suffering the worst effects of climate change, including sea level rise, suggests that adoption of a similar approach to vulnerable homeowners might be the more appropriate revolution and bring policy more into line with the aspirations of the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent national level guidelines and research efforts increasingly suggest the use of resilience and sustainability concepts for natural hazard mitigation and recovery planning at the regional and community levels. This paper aims to distinguish and compare the two abstract concepts in the context of road networks recovering from a hazard event since resilience and sustainability metrics are often interchangeably adopted and can lead to inaccurate equivalencies between the two concepts. A spectrum of resilience and sustainability metrics are defined herein and a research methodology is described to evaluate them probabilistically. A case study demonstration on the road network in the Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area (MMSA) for a probabilistic suite of earthquake scenarios shows that the correlation between network resilience and sustainability is dependent on the hazard level as well as the graphical abstraction of the real road network. While some correlations are observed between temporal sustainability metrics, such as missed trips and traffic emissions, and resilience metrics, like total travel distance and time, the correlation weakens as the network resolution becomes more sparse. These results show that while for dense networks, time-evolving travel time and travel distance may be used as proxy measures for hazard sustainability evolution, for sparsely connected networks, hazard resilience and post-hazard sustainability remain relatively distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the contradictions and tensions in the governance of international migration that the pandemic has exposed. It starts by defining the pandemic emergency as a wicked problem. Even though wicked problems usually do not have solutions, we argue that building resilience and sustainability as key features in migration governance can help address this wicked challenge. We look at three types of resilience: situated, structural and systemic and discuss the extent to which they may form the basis of sustainable migration governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities and neighbourhoods are changing rapidly. While rapid change is accepted, it is less clear how to understand and analyse change and steer it towards a more sustainable trajectory. This paper focuses on the transformation of a particular street in Mamelodi, situated in Pretoria (capital city of South Africa). Utilizing a resilience lens, we unpack the various cycles of adaptation evident in the street. Our analysis shows that the transformation of Tsweu Street broadly followed the phases of the adaptive cycle, namely rapid growth, conservation, release and reorganization and incorporated three dimensions of resilience, namely social or community, spatial and institutional resilience. We argue that resilience thinking offers a mechanism to understand and analyse change at various scales, including the street level and that this provides planners with a tool to work with change through the application of appropriate measures at the relevant time to maximize their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in urbanization and climate change brings new challenges to the cities' sustainability and resilience, mainly related to flood and drought events. Among these challenges, it can be highlighted the physical and health damage to the population, interruption of water, energy and food supply services, damage to basic infrastructure, economic losses and contamination of urban rivers. To contribute to the increase of resilience in urban centers, LID practices have been used as a new approach of mitigation and adaptation within urban drainage systems, aiming at runoff retention, peak flow attenuation, pollutant removal and ecosystem services restoration (e.g., resources recycling, carbon sequestration, thermal comfort and landscape integration). These different mitigation purposes and complementary benefits provided by LID practices can be related to the different Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) presented by the United Nations (UN), to achieve countries' systemic sustainability. The identification of local techniques that contribute to the different SDG helps to achieve their territorialization and application as public policy. Therefore, this paper presents a literature review, categorizing the studies into different generations based on their main application purpose and presents a linkage of the LID benefits to different SDG. Some challenges were identified requiring further investigation, such as the need to identify and quantify the energy demands for LID practices maintenance and their incorporation in the system final energy balance, identification of processes that contribute to carbon sequestration and emission, and risks of emerging pollutants for human health from water reuse and nutrient cycling for sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental change holds many social risks, exposing vulnerable communities and influencing community resilience. Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) both address social risks and impacts following from social changes induced by developments and disasters, aiming to ensure increased and sustainable community resilience. Although similar in purpose, SIA and DRA are rarely intentionally integrated, and while published research is sparse, it does suggest that their integration is an emerging trend. Therefore, as a step to investigate integration, and acknowledging the importance of theoretical underpinnings, this paper investigates the integration of SIA and DRA for increased community resilience. The investigation reveals three distinct areas of potential integration i.e. focus (people centred for sustainable development), approach (pro-active, multi-stakeholder and transdisciplinary), and regulation (mandated under legislative requirements). These findings suggest that both SIA and DRA can benefit significantly from integration, and thereby contribute to increased resilience and improving the social well-being for communities at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptions in the natural gas supply chain result in reduced throughput and associated emissions and losses, causing significant economic, environmental, and social impacts. Therefore, it is crucial to design supply chains that are resilient and sustainable to prevent or reduce the effects of disruptions. This paper proposes a novel Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model, which optimizes the natural gas supply chain in terms of resilience and sustainability, by examining the impact of an additional workflow design (contingency pipeline) located between the shutdown inlet and outlet nodes in the transmission echelon. The model is applied to a "real world" case, using data collected from gas companies operating in Nigeria. Both steady and transient states of the system are examined in this study through a set of scenarios. The best final solution was found to yield 93.6% performance increase when compared to target throughput and 63% performance increase with the introduction of the contingency when compared with the baseline scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the idea of cross-border regional innovation system (CBRIS) to investigate the implications of global and regional changes in social, political, economic, and ecological systems on cross-border regions. In an era of increasingly abrupt changes in border permeability, CBRIS offers an intriguing context for studying such processes. Our main contribution is to define a resilient CBRIS (RCBRIS) for sustainability based on careful reading of previous literature on resilience, sustainability, and CBRIS integration. As merging these concepts requires a sound understanding of the factors driving or constraining CBRIS integration, we conduct a systematic review of the literature to answer our main research question: what factors affect the resilience and sustainability of CBRIS? The literature reveals that the studied CBRIS are not particularly sustainable and that their resilience remains a neglected topic. This is a definite cause for concern for everyone interested in the long-term success of cross-border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic urban centres are struggling to survive in rapidly emerging global environments. While many significant historic districts were demolished to pave the way for new environments, others just disappeared from neglect and destruction. Tensions over land use and the continued consumption of historical areas such as trade and tourism place considerable pressures on their distinctive values that make them attractive places in which to live, work and visit. Such pressures have brought into focus the extent to which cultural sustainability can participate in revitalising a historic city while sustaining its place identity in a global world. In the age of globalisation, the mismatch between cultural (history, memory) and economic forces (tourism, trade) in a historic city can lead to the erosion of place identity. Within this context, this paper explores the following question; 'in what way can cultural and economic forces be integrated with a historical city or district to accommodate change while sustaining its place identity'? The case study approach is used as the primary method of investigation, and old Doha in Qatar is the main setting of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate change adaptation field has evolved considerably in recent years. Important contributions have been made, with scholars developing methods for assessing vulnerability in different countries and communities, documenting broad strategies for adaptation and identifying opportunities for and barriers to adaptation as well as ways to enhance adaptive capacity. Issues of sustainability are, however, not readily argued and embraced. Predominantly, our analysis exposes that current adaptation discourse, particularly in Africa, offers a narrow conceptualisation of sustainability. The paper argues for a clear framework of sustainability in adaptation discourse which encompasses awareness to contextual aspects in responding to climate variability and change as well as resilience aspects. The paper also calls for an expansion of the knowledge base around the concept of 'climate-smart agriculture' towards effectively incorporating sustainability aspects in climate change adaptation discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the Energy System Sciences provide the theoretical backbone and empirical substance we need to connect findings from across the human and natural sciences in a way that is practical, rigorous, and heart-warming at the same time. Our premise is that the same energy science that explains systemic health in ecosystems can be used to create an empirical explanation of systemic health in human systems too. This integrated understanding of planetary health directly addresses the underlying socio-economic drivers of today's crises in a rigorous yet emotionally compelling picture of how to save civilization socially, economically and environmentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and poverty must increasingly be tackled in cities. While cities can be significant contributors to climate change and resource scarcity, and face considerable risks as a consequence of these, they are also central to the solutions for these challenges. The quality of infrastructure, reliability of service provision and other economic and political conditions in urban areas shape levels of resource use by, and exposure to risks for, residents. This paper – which introduces a special issue on resilience and resource efficiency at the city scale – introduces these two concepts and explores the nexus between them. It uses several case studies from different contexts to illustrate the relationship between these ideas, and describes how the papers in the issue engage with them.  [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The fringes between urban areas and their surrounding territory usually concentrate strains of transformation and urban growth. Equally, planning strategies that promote the adaptation of urban development to the identity of territory contribute to the resilience of these urban fringes. This paper aims to illustrate this idea through the analysis of three of Spain's inland medium-sized cities during the period of intense urban growth that started in the eighties and concluded in 2008. The cases of Vitoria, Zaragoza, and Valladolid clearly show the negative consequences of an expansive urban model in their urban fringes, but also the alternatives that slowly emerged over this period. While the main urban planning tools enabled an unsustainable urban expansion, other planning proposals introduced an alternative approach that mitigated the effects of the real estate boom and have paved the way towards a better future: Vitoria with its green infrastructure, Zaragoza with its integrated development effort that took advantage of an International Exhibition and Valladolid with its coordinated planning. These different tools have a key feature in common: a deep comprehension of their territories as the strongest foundation for conducting urban development in more sustainable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perspectives from the recent and ancient past are largely underutilized in modern sustainability or food systems studies. However, information about regional crop histories and land use systems through time can add essential value and context to debates concerning future agricultural strategies and food security. In particular, archaeological and anthropological research can provide long-term perspectives on adaptive solutions and agricultural resilience that could support strategies for sustainable agriculture, especially in developing countries. This paper explores this debate within a food systems framework and highlights the need for researchers to work across disciplines and sectors to share knowledge, exchange ideas and create solutions in order to meet the challenges of feeding the world in a healthy, equitable, sustainable and resilient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture has long been endorsed as a means to promote food security and economic wellbeing in African cities. However, the South African context presents mixed results. In order to establish the contributions of urban agriculture to sustainable livelihoods, the sustainable livelihoods framework is applied to a case study on cultivators from Cape Town's Cape Flats. This study contributes to the empirical literature on urban agriculture by providing a deeper understanding of the benefits cultivators themselves attribute to urban agriculture. The key finding is that cultivators use urban agriculture in highly complex ways to build sustainable livelihoods. NGOs are central to this process. Distrust, crime and a lack of resources are, however, limiting factors. The paper concludes with policy recommendations to support pro-poor urban agriculture in African urban centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience of US container ports is increasingly challenged by disruptive and stressful events such as regulatory change, adverse weather, larger container ship sizes, changing patterns of trade and sea routes, and the still to be quantified effects of enlarging the capabilities and capacity of the Panama Canal. Port sustainability requires the port managers to be resilient in their practices, to maintain existing performance levels and to increase market share when opportunity presents. The primary question that this paper addresses is how US container ports might be affected by adverse events and how they undertake resilience processes when faced with complex problems and uncertain outcomes. The paper gathers insights from literature on complex adaptive systems to discuss how US container ports may adapt to changing circumstances through innovation and the emergent outputs of self-organised agents (components) of their port organisations. The paper suggests that by conceptualising ports as complex adaptive systems, port managers may be able to better understand the complexity of change and organisational dynamics and thus harness the phenomenon of self-organisation towards their strategic intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores resiliency theory by assessing the ability of communities to adapt and recover economically and socially after a natural disaster. Community resiliency describes the capacity of finding a new equilibrium that is strengthened from change. Resilience can be seen as a strategy to facilitate recovery after a trauma and can be used as a preventative measure to avoid undesired outcomes. Through a qualitative assessment of the HandMade in America programme in three rural communities in Western North Carolina, this paper draws attention to the facilitation of community capital, resulting in social and political networks that allowed these towns to rely on increases in tourism to rebound from the 2004 hurricanes season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative paper works across discourses to suggest the possibility and potential of an integrative paradigm for sustainability education that reconciles instrumental and intrinsic educational traditions, informed and infused by resilience theory and social learning. It argues that such an integrative view is required in the context of the urgency of building more resilient local social-ecological systems (SES), and that such a view offers the possibility of new energy and direction in the sustainability education debate. The paper is essentially a thinkpiece that attempts to look at touchstones between discourses to suggest the possibilities and potential of mutual illumination and better integration. The paper begins by reviewing tensions between an instrumentalist view and an intrinsic value view of environmental and sustainability education, the former seeing such education as a means to individual and social change, the latter upholding the primacy of the autonomous learner who, secondarily may - or may not - take action towards sustainability. The paper then considers the discourse of the resilient learner, before reviewing social learning literature linked to resilience and discussing how far these various views can be brought together and reconciled. Parallels are made with tensions in the debate on sustainability when seen as a desirable ideal, or as a process. Transformative learning theory is then introduced in relation to addressing the paradox of resilient but maladaptive worldviews and the need to educate for resilience. The paper concludes with an argument for a transformative education paradigm - 'sustainable education' - which necessarily integrates instrumental and intrinsic views and which nurtures resilient learners able to develop resilient social-ecological systems in the face of a future of threat, uncertainty and surprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays there is a pronounced interest in the need for sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems to address the challenges of future infrastructure development. This paper presents a three-objective optimization model for the investigation of various sustainable and resilient design alternatives for water distribution networks. Although optimal design of water distribution networks is a thoroughly studied area, most researchers focused on efficient algorithms to solve the complex design problem. Cost has predominantly been the objective in previous studies with few models also considering resilience or environmental impacts (CO2emissions). This research combined all these parameters in a multi-objective model to obtain various sustainable and resilient design alternatives. The model is demonstrated on a three-loop benchmark network that was previously studied. The tradeoff between the objectives is further analyzed to identify the most beneficial solution from the pareto-optimal set of solutions. The dollar worth of enhancing resilience of the benchmark network by a unit is estimated to be in the range of $1.23 to $3.93 million, which translates to about 22% to 69% of the least possible life cycle cost. The results of this research reveal that resilience can be increased by paying a justifiable cost that will also compensate for CO2emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural systems are under deterioration due to ageing, mechanical stressors, and harsh environment, among other threats. Corrosion and fatigue can cause gradual structural deterioration. Moreover, natural and man-made hazards may lead to a sudden drop in the structural performance. Inspection and maintenance actions are performed to monitor the structural safety and maintain the performance over certain thresholds. However, these actions must be effectively planned throughout the life-cycle of a system to ensure the optimum budget allocation and maximum possible service life without adverse effects on the structural system safety. Life-cycle engineering provides rational means to optimise life-cycle aspects, starting from the initial design and construction to dismantling and replacing the system at the end of its service life. This paper presents a brief overview of the recent research achievements in the field of life-cycle engineering for civil and marine structural systems and indicates future directions in this research field. Several aspects of life-cycle engineering are presented, including the performance prediction under uncertainty and optimisation of life-cycle cost and intervention activities, as well as the role of structural health monitoring and non-destructive testing techniques in supporting the life-cycle management decisions. Risk, resilience, sustainability, and their integration into the life-cycle management are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses key contributors to sustainable livelihoods in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), Cambodia, by focusing upon villagers' access to assets, adaptation to shock and stress, and their degree of resilience to declines in natural resources. The study reveals that their access to the five assets for sustainable livelihoods is limited; that their capacity to adapt to shock and stress is low due to floods, drought and high food prices; and that their resilience to declines in natural resources is weak. Improvement in their capacity to adapt and in their resilience will be influenced by the degree to which they can access human, physical and social assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and sustainability have both gained traction in civil engineering. There is significant overlap between both fields, but practitioners tend to remain confined to their niche. This paper clarifies the link between both fields, reflects on the underlying concepts, and identifies challenges and opportunities in understanding complex problems involving both resilience and sustainability. A conceptual framework is proposed for understanding resilience and sustainability together. The example of a coastal town subject to sea-level rise and large storms is used to motivate the framework. The example is used to evaluate the use of discount rates for events in the distant future. The results are discussed to determine our ability to decide whether such scenarios are sustainable. The conclusion is that computational approaches will be inadequate. Rather, there is a need for qualitative thinking that embraces ambiguity and unmeasurable uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on multiple tourism destinations was a striking reminder of the vulnerability of tourism-dependent destination communities to shocks and stressors. However, the causal drivers of destination vulnerability remain under-researched. Furthermore, there are few studies that systematically apply and test the usefulness of new theoretical frameworks in assessing real-world problems like vulnerability to natural hazards. This crucial step in social theory development is often overlooked. In this paper we redress these fundamental gaps by “operationalising” the newDestination Sustainability Framework(DSF). TheDSFis used to guide a case study-based comparative destination vulnerability assessment (DVA) of the tsunami-affected destinations of Khao Lak, Patong and Phi Phi Don in Thailand to better understand destination vulnerability and its evolution in different places and developmental contexts. The findings indicate that destination vulnerability is created and perpetuated by a combination of multiple, dynamic and interacting factors, including geographical exposure, destination-specific development characteristics, social structures and governance processes. Underlying these factors and processes are competing stakeholder agendas and actions, historically-embedded cultural norms, institutional preferences and power structures that entrench and perpetuate unequal access to resources, all of which play out at multiple scales of social organisation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is a key driver of global socio-economic progress. However, its sustainability is at risk from multiple shocks and hazards that threaten livelihoods. Surprisingly little is known about the complex drivers of destination vulnerability, leading to the creation and application of ineffective resilience-building solutions. The paper presents the Destination Sustainability Framework (DSF) designed to assess destination vulnerability and resilience, and support successful resilience-building initiatives. Holistic in nature, the DSF comprises: (1) the shock(s) or stressor(s); (2) the interconnected dimensions of vulnerability – exposure, sensitivity, and system adaptiveness; (3) the dynamic feedback loops that express the multiple outcomes of actions taken (or not); (4) the contextualised root causes that shape destinations and their characteristics; (5) the various spatial scales; and (6) multiple timeframes within which social-ecological change occurs. This innovative framework is significant because it's the first framework to chart the complex manifestation of vulnerability and resilience in tourism destinations. Further, it brings tourism sustainability research in line with wider debates on achieving sustainability within the dynamic coupled human–environment system, doing so through the inclusion of insights from contemporary systems approaches, including chaos–complexity theory, vulnerability approaches, sustainability science, resilience thinking, along with the geographies of scale, place and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India, economic and urban growth, and diversification have increased pressure on forests and forest-based social-ecological systems. As in many Himalayan regions, livelihood sustainability is linked to forest resources, products and Services. Recent development in the region, to which these systems may be vulnerable, brings into question environmental and livelihood sustainability. This paper examines the resilience of integrated systems of people and nature, of social-ecological systems, in the face of development pressures by evaluating a number of local and state-level institutional responses. Resilience, which describes the ability of the social-ecological systems to adapt to change by buffering shocks, improving self-organization and increasing capacity for learning, is an essential quality for sustainable development. Institutional responses which positively contribute to resilience and sustainability include the work of mahila mandals in forest management, adoption of Joint Forest Management (JFM) policies and practices, upholding rules, strengthening local institutions, establishing firewood depots and adopting alternative energy sources. Institutional failures brought about by the lack of rule enforcement and corruption erode resilience. The analysis of institutional responses helps to identify areas where capacity exists and areas in which capacity building is needed to produce resilient social-ecological systems and therefore, sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]