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COVID-19 has revealed how challenging it is to manage global, systemic and compounding crises. Like COVID-19, climate change impacts, and maladaptive responses to them, have potential to disrupt societies at multiple scales via networks of trade, finance, mobility and communication, and to impact hardest on the most vulnerable. However, these complex systems can also facilitate resilience if managed effectively. This review aims to distil lessons related to the transboundary management of systemic risks from the COVID-19 experience, to inform climate change policy and resilience building. Evidence from diverse fields is synthesised to illustrate the nature of systemic risks and our evolving understanding of resilience. We describe research methods that aim to capture systemic complexity to inform better management practices and increase resilience to crises. Finally, we recommend specific, practical actions for improving transboundary climate risk management and resilience building. These include mapping the direct, cross-border and cross-sectoral impacts of potential climate extremes, adopting adaptive risk management strategies that embrace heterogenous decision-making and uncertainty, and taking a broader approach to resilience which elevates human wellbeing, including societal and ecological resilience.

Access to clean, safe and sustainable energy – the focus of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 – is one of the principal needs of developing-country populations, for cooking, heating, light, communication, study, livelihoods and security. But people who have been forced to flee their homes, some 80 per cent of whom find refuge in low- and middle-income countries, nearly always remain outside national energy policy and planning mechanisms, even though most live and work within a local economy. This research paper draws on five case studies – focusing on Ethiopia, Jordan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda – to explore how humanitarian efforts to scale up access to sustainable energy for refugees and other displaced communities are affected by policy and governance structures in host countries. The authors underscore that national energy polices and ambitions for low-carbon development pathways need to be accompanied by frameworks that support integration and self-reliance for displaced people, including through rights to work, move and participate freely in host economies. Equally, humanitarian organizations need to prioritize structures, processes and fundraising mechanisms that enable them to attract investment for sustainable energy initiatives and deploy resources carefully and meaningfully.