Daniel Lerch

For more than thirty years, the world community has tried to resolve the combined challenges of environmental degradation, fossil fuel dependence, economic inequality, and persistent social injustice, largely under the banner of internationally brokered “sustainable development.” It is clear today that the pace of these global trends has not been slowed, let alone stopped or … Read more

Efforts to build community resilience often focus on growing the capacity to “bounce back” from disruptions, like those caused by climate change. But climate change is not the only crisis we face, nor is preparing for disruption the only way to build resilience. Truly robust community resilience should do more. It should engage and benefit all community … Read more

There is no single measurement or number that captures resilience; rather, it is underpinned by a suite of attributes. The important point is that resilience thinking is a form of systems thinking.

Homo sapiens is not primarily a rational species. We humans are driven by the universal tendency of living organisms to occupy all accessible habitats and use up all available resources with little heed for the future. Uncontrolled, this instinct alone is a recipe for resource depletion and conflict.

In the 2016 documentary film Before the Flood, Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, declared, “Crisis is not when whole islands are underwater, it is what happens before.” This profound statement is a call to all humanity to heed the signs of debilitating change awaiting Tong’s people and acknowledge that the world is in … Read more

With the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century came a new set of economic systems that served to benefit those with wealth, and extract from those without. Among these was modern capitalism, the system adopted by most of the western world. In the United States in particular, capitalism was combined with a political system that … Read more