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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]

Global Climate Change (GCC) and its responses are already changing how food is produced, processed, and consumed. The agriculture sector's recent history of hardships and challenges brought about by GCC has posed a significant danger to people's ability to acquire food, particularly in developing countries. Today, GCC impacts are already being felt across the globe, especially in remote and rural communities where vulnerability is high, adaptation capacity is limited, and resources are scarce. Therefore, finding sustainable, practical, and cutting-edge solutions to the challenges of GCC is essential. The United Nations 2030 agenda on sustainability aims to reshape the world's society by achieving a number of broad sustainable development goals (SDGs), which call for significant structural changes in society as well as profound transformations in policy, the economy, technology, and science. More specifically, agenda 2030 emphasizes the creation and effective application of models, technology innovations, and strategies that call for the full participation of all parties, including local and indigenous people and their experiences, traditions, and cultural practices. However, despite providing clear examples of sustainable lifestyles within their ecological environment, particularly in the equitable distribution of resources among community members, indigenous and local people's voices, knowledge, and concerns have remained underrepresented in the climate change and sustainability discourse. Thus, this paper advances the climate adaptation, resilience-building, and sustainability (CARS) model in agriculture in developing countries. The CARS model is meant for policymakers and hinges on integrating scientific knowledge with indigenous and local ecological knowledge (ILEK) in the climate change adaptation and sustainability discourse. This theoretical model supports the notion that an understanding of the indigenous and local ecological knowledge systems is critical to opening up an environment that supports community-based efforts to adapt to GCC by giving them options and engaging them in finding innovative, sustainable, and effective strategies to adapt to the impacts emanating from GCC. The ultimate goal of this model is to promote positive co-management and regional development through sustainability and climate change adaptation while generating a forum for discussion among indigenous and local communities and the relevant stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Some of the main urban issues we currently face include ageing populations, the impact of the built environment, and the treatment of urban ecosystems. Yet the dynamic relationships and synergies between these issues, and how they are influenced by urban growth and evolution, receives little attention. Research focus: We explore the nexus between people, the urban built environment, and ecosystems as they grow, age, change, and evolve and propose an integrated approach to examine the relationships, synergies, and challenges that may emerge over time within urban neighbourhoods. We argue that this should draw on the lived-experience and wisdom of older people as part of an intergenerational approach underpinned by local, traditional, and ecological knowledge. We propose Growing Older Urbanism as an ecological, co-evolutionary, and complex-adaptive-systems-based framework to explore the nexus between ageing, the built environment, and urban ecosystems and to reveal the synergies and antagonisms that might exist between these three elements. This framework is designed to be used for various types of urban neighbourhoods, and by a diverse range of stakeholders. As part of this approach we provide a preliminary visual canvas to illustrate how the framework might be used within a selected neighbourhood over an agreed timespan. Conclusion: This paper presents some early thinking around the Growing Older Urbanism concept, while also outlining questions and a proposed transdisciplinary research programme to further develop the framework. We argue that understanding the relationship between ageing and the co-evolution of people, place, and ecosystems may teach us about our past, present, and future, and help us grow towards inclusive and sustainable communities. Science Highlights: • The nexus between ageing, the urban built environment, and urban ecosystems is highlighted. • The potential synergies between people, the built environment, and ecosystems as they age and evolve are scrutinised. • The important role for ageing, wisdom, lived experience, and local knowledge in urban transformation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads play a vital role in transportation systems, and their construction and maintenance expenses are high. Those reasons make crucial the examination of factors that accelerate road deterioration and those factors' negative impacts on societies. Climatic-related elements, especially temperature and precipitation, significantly affect the quality and lifespans of roads. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is causing changes in climate and that the rate of change has accelerated during the past several decades. To assess the impacts of changing climatic parameters on flexible-pavement performance, this study used 32 climate models to evaluate the performance of interstate, primary, and secondary roads across 11 diverse locations with varying traffic and climatic conditions. The study's findings reveal that changing climate exacerbates pavement distresses, leading to reduced pavement lifespans and increased numbers of reconstruction projects, which in turn raise demands for materials and equipment and contribute to higher GHG emissions. The effects of changing climate and changing climate's associated economic and environmental costs make the application of various engineering solutions to enhance pavement resilience essential, as described in this paper, in the absence of comprehensive emissions reduction strategies. [Display omitted] [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]

• Framework for optimising sustainability, resilience, and cost (SRC) metrics is described and applied. • Traditional and low-carbon restoration strategies are compared on a bridge. • Fragility and restoration models are employed toward actionable SRC metrics. • Practical starting point for evaluating climate projections in adaptation strategies. Climate change exacerbates natural hazards and continuously challenges the performance of critical infrastructure. Thus, climate resilience and sustainable adaptation of infrastructure are of paramount importance. This paper puts forward a novel framework and metrics for optimising sustainability (Greenhouse Gas emissions - GHG), climate resilience (restoration time), and cost. The framework aims to facilitate decision-making by operators and stakeholders and communicate actionable trade-offs between these principles. It describes approaches for quantifying ex-ante adaptation and ex-post recovery from the lenses of sustainability and resilience using relevant metrics. This paper concludes with an application of the framework on a bridge, where normalised metrics are integrated into one unique index (I SRC), which can be used in the recovery prioritisation for portfolios of similar assets. The optimisation program includes a bridge recovery, while reducing GHG emissions. The impact of climate change on the sustainability and resilience indexes is examined and the results show how the optimum solutions are adversely affected by different climate projections. In all scenarios examined, more sustainable solutions leading to reduced GHG emissions (tCO2e) are the optimum solutions when weighing resilience and cost. Based on the case study analysed in this paper, the low carbon restoration strategy resulted in up to 50% higher I SRC , which can justify investments for low GHG adaptation strategies in transport assets. [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]

Purpose There is a growing interest in climate change action in the higher education sector. Higher education institutions (HEIs) play an important role as property owners, employers, education and research hubs as well as leaders of societal transformations. The purpose of this paper was therefore to benchmark how universities globally are addressing climate risks.Design/methodology/approach An international survey was conducted to benchmark the sector's organisational planning for climate change and to better understand how the higher education sector contributes to local-level climate adaptation planning processes. The international survey focused especially on the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation plans.Findings Based on the responses of 45 HEIs located in six different countries on three continents, the study found that there are still very few tertiary institutions that plan for climate-related risks in a systematic way.Originality/value The paper sheds light on the barriers HEIs face in engaging in climate adaptation planning and action. Some of the actions to overcome such hindering factors include integrating climate adaptation in existing risk management and sustainability planning processes, using the internal academic expertise and curriculum to assist the mapping of climate change impacts and collaborating with external actors to guarantee the necessary resources. The higher education sector can act as a leader in building institutional resilience at the local scale. [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]

Between 60% and 80% of global energy is consumed in urban areas and given the projected increase in world׳s urban population, this share is expected to further increase in the future. Continuity of energy supply in cities is affected by climate change and a growing array of other threats such as cyber attacks, terrorism, technical deficiencies, and market volatility. Determined efforts, acknowledging the interactions and interlinkages between energy and other sectors, are needed to avoid adverse consequences of disruption in energy supply. Resilience thinking is an approach to management of socio-ecological systems that aims to develop an integrated framework for bringing together the (often) fragmented, diverse research on disaster risk management. The literature on urban resilience is immense and still growing. This paper reviews literature related to energy resilience to develop a conceptual framework for assessing urban energy resilience, identify planning and design criteria that can be used for assessing urban energy resilience, and examine the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework. In the conceptual framework, it is proposed that in order to be resilient, urban energy system needs to be capable of “planning and preparing for”, “absorbing”, “recovering from”, and “adapting” to any adverse events that may happen in the future. Integrating these four abilities into the system would enable it to continuously address “availability”, “accessibility”, “affordability”, and “acceptability” as the four sustainability-related dimensions of energy. The paper explains different resilience principles associated with these abilities and sustainability dimensions. Also, different planning and design criteria were extracted from the literature and categorized into five themes: infrastructure; resources; land use, urban geometry and morphology; governance; and socio-demographic aspects and human behavior. Examination of the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework highlighted the complexity and multi-faceted nature of energy resilience. Exploration of the relevance of the identified criteria to climate change mitigation and adaptation revealed that most of the identified criteria can provide both mitigation and adaptation benefits. [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]

The interrogation of language is crucial in all sub-fields of geography and in related disciplines. This paper interrogates the terms nature, environment, sustainability, and resilience, given their importance in connecting geography with other academic pursuits and with people and organisations that make our discipline relevant. The paper explores how geography may be seen as 'relevant' while maintaining a constructively critical approach. It does so through the example of Sydney's metropolitan strategy/plan that was released in December 2014. The concept of resilience as defined and used in this new metropolitan plan fails to address transboundary issues such as climate change, raising concerns about sustainability. As such it serves the needs of political interests aligned with a growth agenda. This is one example highlighting that a challenge for many geographers is to maintain critical thinking while being relevant. It is an important challenge that geographers should relish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lam, N.S.N., Arenas, H., Brito, P.L., Liu, K.B., 2014. Assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to coastal hazards in the Caribbean region. In: Green, A.N. and Cooper, J.A.G. (eds.), Proceedings 13th International Coastal Symposium (Durban, South Africa), Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 70, pp. 473-478, ISSN 0749-0208. It has been documented that given the same type of climate related hazard and degree of exposure, the vulnerability of a region to the hazard and its resultant damages could be very different, depending on a number of natural and socioeconomic factors. An understanding of the factors contributing to the vulnerability of a region requires a good assessment method. This paper reports the results of a vulnerability assessment to hurricane hazards for the countries in the Caribbean region. The resultant index is a weighted combination of variables. The paper demonstrates a methodology to validate the weights of the variables used to compute the index through regression analysis with the storm damage data. The refined vulnerability indices for the 25 countries studied were found to range from 0.31 to 0.77. Small island countries were generally more vulnerable than large countries, with the highest vulnerability indices (>0.6) found in The Bahamas, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Turks and Caicos Is. Although the hurricane exposure was originally considered a key variable contributing to high vulnerability, low adaptive capacity in the form of low socioeconomic status, high electricity consumption, and low infrastructure development were found to have a higher weight contributing to the overall vulnerability index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to valuate existing building stock with respect to its contribution to a changing and uncertain future, especially in relation to energy performance. Design/methodology/approach – The authors review literature related to existing buildings, climate change and future environmental needs; present energy performance data from ten case studies; and identify inadequacies and scope for improvements with reference to typical housing stock. Findings – Current policies and programmes are inadequate to the scope and scale of the task; a step-change in thought and practice is needed. Practical implications – A massive programme is warranted if the substantial stock of existing buildings is to be adapted to meet identified environmental standards to "save the planet"; a radical re-conceptualisation of building adaptation is required. Originality/value – The paper prompts a review of the role of the surveyor in achieving sustainability through adaptation of existing buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possibilities for transformation of a climate-change hot spot--the coal-producing Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia--using complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory. It uses CAS theory to understand the role of coal in the region's history and efforts to strengthen the ecological, economic, and social resilience of the region's coal industry in the face of demands for a shift from fossil fuel dependency to clean, renewable energy and genuine resilience and sustainability. It uses CAS theory to understand ways in which the resilience of two alternative futures, labeled "Carbon Valley" and "Post-Carbon Society" (Heinberg 2004), might evolve. The paper discusses ways in which changes implemented through the efforts of local communities at local, smaller scales of the nested systems seek to influence the evolution of adaptive cycles of the system at the local, national, and global scales. It identifies the influences of "attractors," defined as factors driving the evolution of the system, that are influential across the panarchy. These include climate change threats, markets, regulatory regimes, political alliances, and local concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the Hunter's coal dependency. These factors are weakening the apparent resilience of the coal industry, which is being propped up by the coal industry corporations, labor unions, and governments to maintain coal dependency in the Carbon Valley. Moreover, they are creating an alternative basin of attraction in which a Post-Carbon Society might emerge from the system's evolutionary processes. [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 '15-minute city' concept is emerging as a potent urban regeneration model in post-pandemic cities, offering new vantage points on liveability and urban health. While the concept is primarily geared towards rethinking urban morphologies, it can be furthered via the adoption of Smart Cities network technologies to provide tailored pathways to respond to contextualised challenges through the advent of data mining and processing to better inform urban decision-making processes. We argue that the '15-minute city' concept can value-add from Smart City network technologies in particular through Digital Twins, Internet of Things (IoT), and 6G. The data gathered by these technologies, and processed via Machine Learning techniques, can unveil new patterns to understand the characteristics of urban fabrics. Collectively, those dimensions, unpacked to support the '15-minute city' concept, can provide new opportunities to redefine agendas to better respond to economic and societal needs as well as align more closely with environmental commitments, including the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 11 and the New Urban Agenda. This perspective paper presents new sets of opportunities for cities arguing that these new connectivities should be explored now so that appropriate protocols can be devised and so that urban agendas can be recalibrated to prepare for upcoming technology advances, opening new pathways for urban regeneration and resilience crafting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experts working on behalf of international development organisations need better tools to assist land managers in developing countries maintain their livelihoods, as climate change puts pressure on the ecosystem services that they depend upon. However, current understanding of livelihood vulnerability to climate change is based on a fractured and disparate set of theories and methods. This review therefore combines theoretical insights from sustainable livelihoods analysis with other analytical frameworks (including the ecosystem services framework, diffusion theory, social learning, adaptive management and transitions management) to assess the vulnerability of rural livelihoods to climate change. This integrated analytical framework helps diagnose vulnerability to climate change, whilst identifying and comparing adaptation options that could reduce vulnerability, following four broad steps: i) determine likely level of exposure to climate change, and how climate change might interact with existing stresses and other future drivers of change; ii) determine the sensitivity of stocks of capital assets and flows of ecosystem services to climate change; iii) identify factors influencing decisions to develop and/or adopt different adaptation strategies, based on innovation or the use/substitution of existing assets; and iv) identify and evaluate potential trade-offs between adaptation options. The paper concludes by identifying interdisciplinary research needs for assessing the vulnerability of livelihoods to climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Resilience research often includes time series analysis in search of trend shifts. Recently statistical signals including changes in variance and autocorrelation, were proven to be universal indicators of stability. In this paper the suitability of those early warning signals was tested on two case studies: oysters production of France (case study 1) and catch rates of the native oyster in the Solent, UK (case study 2). First, trend analyses were performed and their association to the evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index was assessed. For the French oyster production, two sinusoidal waves were found in the first and second order residuals with periods of 33 and 8 years. In the Solent, the trend depiction showed after an initial increase, the catch rates of oysters declined over time from West to East. A positive relationship was apparent between NAO and both the production and population data, with a significant correlation in case study 2. Furthermore, a high and significant spectral coherency in the 8 year period of case study 1 revealed a near phase opposition between the influence of NAO and the French oyster production. For the first and second case study, the early warning signals calculated were lag-1 autocorrelation and variance, respectively. In case study 1, the stability of the low frequency wave of the first order residuals could not be assed, the trend of lag 1 autocorrelation was thus not conclusive. However the high but stable lag-1 autocorrelation of the second residuals, revealed a probable underlying stability. In case study 2 significant increase in variance reflected the instability prior to the decline. It is discussed that in periodic signals the number of residual fluctuations needs to be sufficient to allow the generation of an autocorrelation trend within the limits of the sliding window, used for its calculation. The importance of time scale and appropriate de-trending is also questioned when calculating and interpreting early warning signals as indicators of underlying (in)stability. Finally besides their scientific use, also the utility of early warning signals in managerial settings are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cities, as entities, are inevitably exposed to a range of the internal and external factors that shape their urban development and planning. As complex adaptive systems, cities possess different capabilities and opportunities for the re-configuration, transformation and learning from these disturbances. This city profile explores these processes using Darwin, the Northern Territory's capital and Australia's eighth-largest city as an example. The city profile is situated within Urban Resilience Theory. It unpacks the nuanced way geographic factors and spatial isolation; natural disasters, World War 2 bombing, border security threats, natural resource extraction, and tourism have shaped Darwin's urban development. Understanding these nuances and their spatiotemporal dynamics coalesces into the identified system susceptibilities and opportunities for an adaptive and sustainable development presented in this paper. The city's unique urban governance, successive reconstruction, socio-spatial dynamics, history, and challenges make it an excellent case study of city growth dynamics and resilience within the Asian-Pacific region. The profile highlights Darwin's regional planning and the (historic) production of urban space, along with climate change risks and adaptation, increasingly inaccessible housing and unaffordability, economic growth challenges and demographic dynamics. • Population growth was associated with capital projects, resource extraction booms, and military presence in Darwin. • Complex political, socio-economic, and disruptive forces shaped population growth, urban planning, and development. • Darwin has one of the most expensive rental housing markets among Australian capital cities. • Current spatial growth and development furthered automobile-dependent mobility among households. • Project-based development approaches proved to be inadequate to deliver sustainable and resilient urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic motivated this paper, which revisits the nexus of public health and the city, itself a main source of a pandemic which similarly threatens the lives and properties of the world population gradually one glacier at a time: climate change. We argue that pandemics expose both the vulnerability and resilience of the urban system expansively, from rooftop to the region, but also serve as change agents for the planning of resilient cities and regions globally. The discussion of the urban system and the pandemic is comparative, with the recent coronavirus and climate change, a persistent, long-lasting pandemic. The historical and critical review and synthesis of the durable concepts of the urban system at the kernel of the theories and practices of urbanism is highlighted by place matters, cyberspace, density, access, and the city-region. We note the implications for reconfiguring the resilient urban system of the future effectively with pandemic as change agent and the comprehensive plan and its regulatory zoning ordinance as implementation tool. • Pandemics expose both the vulnerability and resilience of the urban system, from rooftop to the region. • Pandemics are change agents for the comprehensive planning of resilient cities and regions. • The discussion of the urban system and the pandemic is comparative, with the recent coronavirus and persistent climate change. • We highlight durable concepts of the urban system at the kernel of the theories and practices of urbanism. • The resilient urban system is characterized holistically by place matters, cyberspace, density, access, and the city-region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT How can the past inform the present? Archaeologists working though IHOPE-Maya seek to address this question by using archaeological data and ecological reconstructions to explore human-nature couplings. Maya archaeologists are revitalizing and contemporizing the field to focus on issues relevant today: the socio-natural boundary and the coupled human-nature dynamic. The ancient Maya occupied a diverse range of tropical environments that permits a comparative exploration of past permutations in adaptive responses and may also be instructive concerning issues of overexploitation. The variety of places that the Maya occupied afforded diverse opportunities and constraints. By providing access to long-term historical interactions between peoples and their landscapes, archaeology is uniquely qualified to define, examine, and interpret topics like sustainability, resilience, and vulnerability that are as equally significant to the past as they are to the present. Because Maya archaeology is well positioned to analyze ancient variability in political structures and cultural adaptations that can be related to differential societal success and decline, the discipline can contribute to broader, more current, debates concerning climate change, population limits, urban forms, landscape modifications, and stability. The research being undertaken by IHOPE-Maya hopes to serve as a catalyst for transforming the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]