Resilience

Fulfilling societal functions in the face of accumulating and disruptive environmental change at various scales, whilst ensuring our natural environments are protected, restored and sustained.

Environmental degradation, including depletion of natural resources and associated loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, present profound threats to the sustainability, health, and prosperity of societies and economies around the globe. Vulnerability to environmental change is simultaneously being magnified by climate change, socio-economic volatility, and geopolitical instability, which together are increasing the frequency, magnitude, and exposure to natural hazards of populations.

The Resilience challenge area seeks to bring together knowledge and expertise from across The University of Manchester and beyond to support societies to respond and adapt sustainably and efficiently to risks posed by environmental degradation in a changing world. A core focus of the challenge area is on supporting interdisciplinary knowledge generation and sharing about the underlying drivers of environmental change, and how these drivers in turn interact with wider socio-ecological changes to shape patterns societal vulnerability and risk.

Together with external partners, we leverage this knowledge to assess and devise solutions for building, sustaining, and scaling resilience to environmental degradation and change at local, national and international scales. Core areas of activity include immediate disaster and crisis response, along with proactive planning through vulnerability assessment, risk management, risk transfer, and social protection mechanisms to help minimise impacts of environmental change and hazards on individuals, societies, economies and natural ecosystems.

Case Studies

 

Resilience Challenge Lead

 

Dr Ben Parkes, Lecturer in Climate Resilience

Ben is a lecturer in Climate Resilience in the Department of Civil Engineering and Management. His research focus is on mitigating or adapting to the impacts of climate change. The topics he researches range from water access for crops, to aircraft emissions to sustainable computing. His teaching has two major components, sustainability of infrastructure systems to the first year civil engineering students and climate impacts analysis to the fourth years.