Resilience has become a central consideration across practice, policy, and business. It is increasingly integrated into public health strategies, private-sector risk management, corporate planning, development, and financial investment. This growing interest in resilience is not by chance. In recent years, the world has faced a variety of overlapping crises, from climate extremes and military conflicts to the COVID-19 pandemic and cascading disruptions in trade and food systems. Volatility is no longer an exception; it is the new norm.

Decision-makers across regions and sectors urgently need clear, science-based, and actionable knowledge to maintain the resilience of people and the planet and to ensure societies have the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform in order to thrive amid uncertainty. Yet, despite a wealth of research into the science of resilience, the findings often remain complex, making them difficult to translate into actionable insights for leaders outside the scientific community. The Resilience Science Must-Knows address this challenge head-on by distilling decades of cutting-edge resilience science into nine critical Must-Knows refined through dialogue with decision-makers.

Each Resilience Science Must-Know is intentionally broad. Together, they provide a shared understanding of the foundations of resilience that can guide decision-making and shape resilience strategies. This broad framing allows the Must-Knows to be applied across different sectors and scales. These top-level descriptions are meant to reflect the interconnected nature of complex systems and the volatile political, social, and economic realities within which they operate.

The nine Resilience Science Must-Knows are designed for decision-makers and implementers seeking to build and enable systemic resilience grounded in scientific research. This report targets decision-makers working at multiple scales and sectors, including community leaders, local and national governments, businesses, investors, donor organisations, and international institutions.

Grounded in science, shaped by practice

The Resilience Science Must-Knows are the product of an unprecedented collective effort undertaken by the global resilience research community. The report synthesises insights from multiple areas of resilience research and is informed by practice to ensure both scientific robustness and real-world relevance. They were developed through:

• Broad expert engagement: Over 120 resilience researchers from around the world contributed through a survey, capturing a diversity of expertise across sustainability science, social-ecological systems, climate adaptation, ecology, economics, governance, and more.
• Global editorial leadership: An editorial board of 20 leading resilience scholars— spanning different disciplines, regions, and schools of thought within resilience— guided the production process, ensuring its scientific rigour and inclusivity.
• Peer-reviewed literature: This work was enriched by a review of key rigorous and impactful research covering decades of resilience scholarship.
• Dialogue with decision-makers: Input from 162 leaders representing 134 organisations across policy, business, and civil society provided feedback on draft versions of the Resilience Science Must-Knows, helping align them with the realities of governance, investment, and practice.

This collective effort gives the Resilience Science Must-Knows unique legitimacy, providing decision-makers with a trusted foundation for navigating an increasingly uncertain world.

From science to impact

This report is not an endpoint. In the next phase of our efforts—the Resilience Road to Action—we will work closely with decision-makers across a range of sectors, including food and agriculture, urban development, health, and finance, to translate the Resilience Science Must-Knows into actionable guidelines. The Resilience Road to Action will not prescribe actions for individual businesses or agencies but will offer clear, evidence-based guidance on what resilience looks like in practice within a given sector or context, tailored to specific challenges. This approach provides a critical bridge between broad strategic framing and practical relevance.