Designing a resilient future for land and water use (KB-55-000-007)

As the global consequences of climate change become increasingly serious, there is a growing need for evidence-based measures and investments to further build the climate resilience of land and sea areas. In this project, we aim to develop tools to assess the current resilience of socio-ecological systems and their future vulnerability, and to design solutions that enable these systems to become more resilient or transform through co-creation. We do this through innovation, new governance designs, multi-stakeholder processes, nature-based solutions and scaling up.

As indicated by Ingram et al. (2023) and Fonteijn et al. (2022), increasing resilience requires the alignment of climate adaptation at the individual, landscape/marine area and value chain levels. In this project, we will focus on the individual and landscape/marine area levels, with the project divided into four main phases: 1) Inter- and transdisciplinary integration and co-design of tools for assessing resilience and methodological approaches – building on the knowledge base, experiences and practices developed in the WSER. 2) Assessment of current resilience at different levels, including examining how adaptation is coordinated between these levels and an assessment of the tools used to evaluate resilience at multiple levels. 3) Assessment of future resilience requirements under different climate trajectories (using models). In doing so, we take into account current measures to improve resilience and evaluate tools for analysing scenarios for future resilience at different levels. 4) Developing/expanding a toolbox and involving decision-makers at different levels. The insights from the resilience assessment will be used to jointly design strategies and transition pathways, using innovation, new designs, nature-based solutions and scaling up. The four phases will gradually focus on practical applications in various land and sea areas in both high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Vietnam, the Netherlands and Ethiopia.