Understanding the social dimensions of resilience: The role of the Social Sciences in Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Action, and Sustainable Development

Abstract

This special issue contributes to building an integrated social science perspective on resilience and resilience‐building. The articles in this issue provide theoretical reflections and empirical insights on two dimensions that characterize resilience in society. The first (local community dimension) comprises the set of community resources, services, adaptive, transformative and coping capacities, processes, actions and behaviors that enable communities to learn from crises, disasters and past failures and transform toward sustainability in localities (community resilience). The second (governance dimension) comprises the set of adaptive and transformative governance strategies and assessment frameworks that enable social learning and sustainability transformation to be strengthened in localities and scaled up across multiple governance levels (social resilience). This special issue provides a theoretical common‐ground and practical pathways to define resilience and to support recovery and development planning to enhance resilience in society in order to achieve effective disaster risk reduction and climate action for sustainable development.