Like the centre, the project is a joint effort between the Beijer Institute, Stockholm University and SEI with a strong focus on complex systems, regime shifts and resilience. The centre argues that because of positive feedbacks causing non-linear dynamics and regime shifts in social-ecological systems, a resilience approach will be required for guiding management and policy towards sustainability.

Research agenda
- What are basic processes and sources of resilience in social-ecological systems and features behind loss of resilience and how do they interact across temporal and spatial scales?

- How can governance systems be shaped and stimulated to emerge across spatial and temporal scales in order to cope with uncertainty, surprise and vulnerability in social-ecological systems? What are the lessons from past experience and history?

- To what extent is there a need to revise current approaches to economic policy, indicators of wealth and governance in the light of complex systems and cross-scale interactions? In particular, is it possible to assess the value of resilience so as to include it in an accounting framework?