“We need to connect the head and heart to get action in the hands”

“These are turbulent times, but it is so nice to see so many people here from different parts of society.” With those words, Director Line Gordon and Chair of the Board Carl Folke welcomed guests to Stockholm Resilience Day 2026. It was the Centre's third annual gathering, weaving together everything from AI, coral reefs and corporate strategy to ancient joiks, food systems and white winters.

Folke set the philosophical stakes early: “Humanity being intertwined with the biosphere is not a philosophy or a point of view, it is the reality – all the way down to the microorganisms that live within us and have been around since before the great oxygenation around 2 billion years ago.”

Resilient leadership: business and labour

A panel on resilient leadership brought together Christian Cederholm, CEO of Investor, Therese Svanström, chair of TCO (the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees), and Stephan Barthel, programme director of Fairtrans.

Cederholm spoke frankly about corporate responsibility: “This is about business and competitiveness for us. We have been around for more than 100 years, and we want to be around for at least 100 more.” He described decoupling economic growth from emissions as central, “the crocodile gap, as we call it,” and noted that green electricity is among the most pressing challenges for portfolio companies.

Svanström connected the transition to jobs and industrial opportunity: “We want to leave a healthy planet to the next generation, but also competitiveness and jobs. The green transition is the new industrial step forward for Sweden.” Barthel reflected on shifting public opinion: “The silent majority in Sweden wants more radical climate policies.”

A biosphere under pressure but also reasons for hope

Science Directors Magnus Nyström and Beatrice Crona opened the knowledge programme with a wide lens on where humanity stands in the Anthropocene. Nyström, holding a couple of dead corals in his hands, spoke about the Blue Acceleration, the rapidly intensifying human impacts and demands on the ocean, while also pointing to the fragile hope embedded in the High Seas Treaty which recently entered into force.

“We met people on a recent field trip to Raja Ampat in Indonesia who wanted to visit the coral reefs there before they're gone,” Nyström noted. “But the reefs in that part of Indonesia are still in good condition and show that there are reefs that can repopulate damaged reefs. We face many challenges, but there is also hope and it is important to communicate that.”

 Crona turned attention to the economic systems that are quietly accelerating the crisis. She described research revealing how most European funds that are classified under sustainability labels have in practice no meaningful sustainability ambitions.

“Our accounting systems have been designed around what is easy to quantify,” she explained. “We are essentially paying to destroy what sustains us. Distance often hides the damage – what seems to be somebody else's environmental problem often ends up being your own operational problem. Crop production in 155 countries depends on rainfall from forests in other countries.”

But Crona was clear that the science is not a counsel of despair. “It was a bit of a gloomy year. But our science says it is not hopeless. We need to stay the course.”

Resilience is non-negotiable

The Global Resilience Partnership’s knowledge director Cibele Queiroz and Associate Professor Albert Norström presented a distillation of fifty years of resilience research, captured in the Centre's Resilience Science Must-Knows report, which was published ahead of COP30 in Brazil. Norström stressed that the stakes have fundamentally changed.

“Resilience is not optional any longer, it is non-negotiable in the Anthropocene,” he said. “When the systems we have are no longer fit to the current situation, we need to transform. Resilience is not an end goal. It is a continuous process of learning and adapting,” added Queiroz while also emphasising that resilience is inseparable from questions of justice and power.

Food systems and planetary boundaries

Centre Director Line Gordon and PhD candidate Mary Scheuermann presented the Centre's latest work on food system transformation, building on the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission. Gordon highlighted the scale of what is at stake: five out of seven transgressed planetary boundaries are linked to the food system, and this time the Commission included a social foundation as a third pillar alongside environmental and health dimensions.

“Less than 1% of the world's population currently lives in the so-called safe and just space, where food needs are met within all boundaries,” she noted, while pointing to eight clusters of solutions and 23 concrete actions identified in the Commission’s research.

Is there a Move 37 for the planet?

Associate Professor Victor Galaz explored what artificial intelligence means for a planet under pressure. Drawing on the boardgame of Go and the famous “Move 37,” when the AI program AlphaGo made a move no human had ever considered, Galaz asked whether AI could help us find similarly unexpected solutions for the planet.

“It was not a human move,” he said. “AI is adding a new layer, a new language, that can also expand the reach of science.”

He described a number of real-world applications, e.g., predicting extreme flood events in advance and using large language models to support informed democratic dialogues. But he was also candid about the increased energy use and material footprints, as well as the unmet promises: “AI will be a game changer for climate change, people said already in 2018, and it has not happened.” His question to the room: “Is there a Move 37 for the planet?”

Science for a peaceful ocean

Associate Professor Robert Blasiak reflected on a world of conflict and geopolitical tension, and asked what science can contribute to peace as well as sustainability. He traced the history of ocean governance, noting that the 1968 Decade for Ocean Exploration had explicit peacebuilding aims while today's UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development makes no direct mention of it. He suggested this was a missed opportunity to recognize and celebrate all of the contributions the Decade is making to a more peaceful world.

He pointed to collaborative marine governance frameworks, including the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) where nine coastal nations collaborate to protect the Baltic Sea, as well as collaboration between Cuba, Mexico and the US to establish a network of marine protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico, as examples of what is possible.

Reflections on science and impact

Hans Adolfsson, president of Stockholm University, and Maria Khorsand, CEO of Mistra, offered reflections on the science presented. Adolfsson was impressed by all the work of the Centre and emphasised the importance of a holistic view while encouraging the room to find the unexpected solutions, “the moves Victor talked about.”

Khorsand was struck by the emphasis on hope and solutions, including on AI. She reflected on what makes the Centre distinctive: “Mistra can choose to fund any area we think is important. The Centre is a living example of what that can mean – science that adds value, enables resilience, and requires many actors working together.”

White winters, sustainable meals

In one of the day's more unexpected conversations, Olympic cross-country skier Charlotte Kalla joined nutritionist Linda Bakkman and PLATE Director Anna-Karin Quetel to discuss “Food for White Winters” – a centre initiative with the Swedish and International skiing community. The project is exploring how sustainable, lower-emission meals can be served in sports without compromising performance.

“It is easier as a former athlete,” Kalla reflected on shifting eating habits. “More difficult when I was competing.” Bakkman described the additional complexity: “Healthy and sustainable can go hand in hand, but when you add performance, it adds a layer of complexity – for instance, fibres can be a problem.”

International collaboration under pressure

Sara Elfstrand (SwedBio), Ulrika Modéer (secretary general, Swedish Red Cross), and Esse Nilsson (senior climate policy advisor, Sida) examined what international cooperation looks like when budgets are being cut and geopolitical consensus is fraying.

Elfstrand noted that 2025 saw the largest cuts in international aid budgets ever recorded, at precisely the moment when new national biodiversity plans are being submitted under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Modéer drew on the Red Cross's long tradition of working with resilience: “Prevention is better than the cure, and also cheaper. Even when international processes are not working as we wish, people find resilient solutions at the local level.” Nilsson urged more collaboration between researchers and practitioners: “Crises can also prompt development. I hope the current crises can lead to some good development as well.”

Collaboration in a polarised world

Frida Bengtsson, secretary general Greenpeace Sweden, Centre Professor Garry Peterson, and Sámi leader and joiker Jörgen Stenberg reflected on what it really means to collaborate across difference.

Bengtsson challenged the easy optimism around collaboration: “We talk about it all the time, but we have to be better at defining the problems we are trying to solve. Disagreement can be a good thing, by not walking away from conflicts we can counteract polarisation. We need to agree on what we disagree on.”

 Stenberg spoke from Sámi experience with striking directness: “In 1769, our community became multicultural when the Swedes came.” He described the loss of 70% of reindeer grazing land and reflected on what genuine dialogue requires. “Asking for permission is key in our culture.” His account of how collaboration with researchers had deepened thinking on both sides was matched by his grief for what has already been lost: “The old land exists in the joiks. Now it's only contorta and shit.”

Peterson highlighted that even communities with shared interests often cannot learn from each other: “Indigenous knowledge is important, but often communities don't know about each other.” He pointed to the work of the intergovernmental biodiversity panel IPBES as one mechanism for bridging that gap.

Connecting head and heart

Deputy Science Directors Michele-Lee Moore and Per Olsson brought the scientific programme to a close with a call for reflection, and a reminder that transformation requires more than knowledge alone.

Moore spoke of the need to create space: “We need to stop and think, create space to reflect and heal to help people go from doing less bad to flourishing.” She pointed to new frameworks for measuring what sustains us beyond the carbon metrics that currently dominate.

Olsson, reflected on the Centre's long tradition of working with the arts, e.g., using theatre to address conflict and music to reach through to people. He described a recent collaboration with musician Sara Parkman and the Kronos Quartet exploring what it means to be human, and a live rendering of the Bob Dylan classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to warn of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. “We need to connect the head and heart to get action in the hands,” he said.

The day closed with food, music, and a live performance by Sara Parkman – a fitting end to a gathering that had moved, like the science it celebrated, between urgency and hope.