Resilience: Keeping It Real (and Conventional)

I seem to be making airlines as happy at the same time that I am making my friends and colleagues working on climate mitigation unhappy: last week I was in New York for Climate Week, and for the past few days I’ve been in Australia for an environmental and ecosystem summit. Not surprisingly, I’ve brought along a virus as a traveling companion, so apologies to all of my public health colleagues as well.

I’ve just written another essay on a convergence between investment and resilience policy based on my trip to New York and how the financial flows around resilience are moving in new directions. I want to comment here on a few trends that are signaling the rise in the seriousness that resilience is provoking and that feels both new and exciting.

In late August at a Freshwater Challenge event organized by WWF in Stockholm, various luminaries spoke, emphasizing how this initiative represents a way to protect and preserve rivers and lakes as ecosystems. Two national representatives intervened. Julien Katchinoff, ever-eloquent, talked about US initiatives at home and abroad. Iara Giacomini, a colleague from Brazil’s Environment Ministry (MMA), said something almost in passing that was both profound and remarkable: In Brazil, we are learning what resilience really means. And we are also learning that many things we thought were helping with adaptation and resilience are not relevant.

What has been teaching Brazil new lessons about resilience? Apparently the WaterResilienceTracker.cc, led by my friends Mario Lopez and Idrees Malyar and supported by our team with the Inter-American Development Bank, especially Paula Roberts and Raul Munoz. I had not met Iara before, and she did not know that Ingrid or I were in the audience. This is the kind of message we have been hearing consistently from MMA and from the Water and Sanitation Agency (ANA) as well as many other countries.

Given that Brazil is going to be hosting UNFCCC COP30 next year and that adaptation and resilience are already major themes for the COP, her words mark a profound shift: transitioning from the language of simple restoration, conservation, and protection to preparation and getting ready for the new issues that are already here — and the even newer ones to come. She was also affirming that water is the road we drive to reach resilience.

The second big trend — another one where Brazil is taking an important role — is the convergence between the three so-called Rio Conventions: climate (UNFCCC), drought (UNCCD), and biodiversity (UNCBD). All came from the same 1992 Earth Summit, and all three have since grown like weeds rather than as a coordinated, convergent set of policies. Can we braid the strands into a single, strong cable?

As you might have guessed, I think the common thread is water — obviously for CCD and (to a lesser degree) with CBD. And water is already dominant in the adaptation and resilience space for the UNFCCC and growing in importance for mitigation too (water4netzero.cc, anyone?).

The narrative of resilience is largely missing from both CCD and CBD, especially in the way that Iara Giacomini is talking about resilience as something critical, new, and different.

What might such a braiding look like? Two points seem important here.

First, these ropes are not all of the same weight and strength. CCD and CBD do not have the same transformative ambitions or momentum as the UNFCCC — there’s nothing comparable to the strength of the NDCs framework, nor do they have the same juice as the ambitions around climate finance. Finance ministers and heads of state are now viewing climate change as a critical threat — and an economic opportunity. Indeed, financial and economic systems are reorganizing as a result of climate change in the same way that ecosystems and social systems are. The CBD and CCD deal with important issues but they probably need to reorganize themselves so they are more interoperable; climate change is that disruptive for their core ideas. I write this as a former conservation biologist and someone who talks about drought professionally quite often. To paraphrase Orwell, All conventions are equal, but some are more equal than others. I would argue that the UNFCCC essentially stands apart from the rest of the UN family because of its scope, reach, and potential.

Second, resilience needs to play a special role in binding these three conventions. My son is in scouts, and his scoutmaster is a serious hiker and climber. He knows his knots and how to care for ropes — well-tended rope has kept him alive. One of the (many) things that Scoutmaster Monaco has taught me is how to “whip” the ends of rope. Whipping is a way of wrapping a separate strand around the end of a rope to keep it from fraying. We need resilience to whip these conventions and hold them together. But only if that strand is credible, strong, and true.

John Matthews

Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia