As the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) gets underway in Paris, #resilience appears with increasing frequency on my Twitter feed, and I frequently hear talk about “socio-ecological resilience,” “climate-resilient development,” and “resilience programming.”

USAID defines resilience as “the ability to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.” Climate-resilient development can therefore be viewed as efforts which respond to the risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate so that development goals are achieved while negative impacts of climate change are minimized.

But what does that actually mean for those communities most vulnerable to climate change, such as coastal communities in Madagascar? Is resilience something that we should be trying more explicitly to foster? How can we support them to bounce back from increasingly frequent and severe weather events, such as tropical cyclones or droughts, associated with a changing climate?

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