Climate Resilience: How Nature Teaches Us to Prepare for and Recover from Climate Change

Natural disasters and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and impossible to ignore due to climate change—costing lives, damaging homes and infrastructure, and harming wildlife habitats every year. It often feels like every climate change-driven disaster is immediately followed by renewed calls for greater “climate resilience”—a phrase that’s become common in government briefings, nonprofit campaigns, corporate sustainability plans, and media coverage.

But what does “climate resilience” actually mean? And where does the term come from? By exploring what climate resilience means and where the term comes from, we learn that nature itself teaches us how to prepare for and recover from disturbances, like climate disasters.

Climate resilience refers to the ability of natural and human systems to withstand, recover from, and thrive amid hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate. Resilience is different from adaptation, another common approach to responding to climate change.

Adaptation is focused more on discrete actions that help ecosystems and communities adjust to climate impacts, while resilience is a broader concept that focuses on the capacity of a system to anticipate, cope, and recover from shocks. In essence, adaptation is about adjusting to new conditions but resilience is about the capacity to handle and bounce back from challenges.

Climate resilience requires a holistic and multi-dimensional approach to building capacity. This means that climate resilience includes a range of approaches—from policy, infrastructure, planning, education, and more. 

Nature’s Model of Resilience

The concept of resilience in the context of climate has roots in ecology, where it originally referred to an ecosystem’s ability to absorb disturbances and still retain its basic structure and function. Ecosystem resilience is rooted in key characteristics like diversity, redundancy, flexibility, and cooperation.

Because ecosystems and human systems are not separate but are deeply interconnected components of a single, dynamic whole, the concept of ecological resilience has naturally extended to describe human systems, including both physical and social infrastructure. By applying the key characteristics of ecosystem resilience to the human-centered aspects too, we can enhance our overall capacity to adapt, recover, and thrive amid climate-caused disruptions.

Climate-Resilient Physical Infrastructure

In natural ecosystems, characteristics such as diversity, redundancy, and flexibility in the physical environment are linked to increased resilience because they help maintain ecosystem functions following disturbances.

Diversity refers to the presence of a variety of different elements within the same context. This variation can exist at many levels, such as the variety of species within a single ecosystem, the variety of interacting ecosystems, the range of biological processes, and genetic variation found within populations. A diverse system is more resilient because it is more likely to have a broader toolkit of responses to new or changing conditions. 

Redundancy refers to the presence of multiple elements that can perform the same or similar functions. Even if one element fails, redundancy ensures that a process can continue to function. For instance, multiple species of pollinators in a particular ecosystem, such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, can often pollinate the same types of flowers. If one pollinator species declines or disappears, others can still perform the pollination function, ensuring the plants continue to reproduce. 

Flexibility refers to the capacity of a particular system or element to adjust its behavior, structure, or function in response to changing conditions. The ability to be flexible helps an existing system adapt in real-time, without having to add new elements. For example, octopuses demonstrate remarkable flexibility by changing their behavior and body shape in response to different environments. They can alter their skin color and texture to blend into various backgrounds, helping them avoid predators or sneak up on prey.

Building physical natural infrastructure with diverse, redundant, and flexible features contributes to more climate-resilient human communities, too. For example, urban stormwater systems can become more resilient by incorporating both diversity and redundancy through natural infrastructure. By using both conventional underground pipes and natural infrastructure like rain gardens, street trees, or bioswales, cities can create more reliable and effective systems that can handle excess water.

If conventional stormwater systems become overwhelmed by climate-related flooding, the natural infrastructure can still function and absorb and slow runoff, reducing the risk of damage and disruption.

In addition, natural infrastructure might include using a mix of native plant species to support biodiversity while responding to varying climate stresses, including periods of drought or intense rainfall. This diversity and redundancy ensures that some elements of the plant community can continue to perform even when others are stressed. 

Likewise, wetlands are powerful natural infrastructure because of their flexibility. They change with respect to differences in water levels by shifting in size, shape, and function in response to seasonal variations, storms, or human interventions. This allows them to effectively buffer communities from floods, storm surges, and other climate-related challenges. This differs from sea walls or other conventional infrastructure because those systems are typically rigid and fixed in place.

While sea walls can provide strong protection against specific events, they often degrade over time, are expensive to maintain or upgrade, and cannot evolve with changing environmental conditions. In contrast, wetlands can self-repair, expand, or shift naturally, providing ongoing and adaptive protection that strengthens over time rather than weakens.

Climate-Resilient Social Infrastructure

Natural ecosystems also show us the importance of interdependence and cooperation in resilience. Resilience isn’t just about individual strength, it’s about the strength of relationships that make up a system. Ecosystems endure and recover from disturbances because ecological communities support one another by sharing resources, coordinating functions, and adapting collectively.

For example, in forests, mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with tree roots, creating vast underground networks that distribute nutrients and water between trees. These “mutual aid” systems allow stronger trees to support weaker ones, especially in times of stress. In addition, in coral reef ecosystems, corals depend on algae living within their tissues to supply them with energy through photosynthesis, while the algae rely on corals for protection and access to sunlight. This reciprocal relationship is vital for the reef’s survival.

Just as the principles of resilient ecosystems can inform the design of climate-resilient, human-centered physical infrastructure, they can also guide the development of social infrastructure. Resilient communities depend on cooperative social infrastructure like mutual aid networks where neighbors help neighbors, especially when formal systems are overwhelmed. For instance, during disasters like Hurricane Sandy, COVID-19, or Hurricane Helene grassroots efforts often provided faster and more culturally competent support than institutional responses. 

Likewise, communities rely on strong reciprocal partnerships among local governments, nonprofits, and resident-led groups to work together on climate resilience. These partnerships are more successful when they are grounded in inclusive and equitable processes.

Because resilient systems require multiple perspectives, inclusive and equitable processes can deepen cooperation and strengthen networks by valuing different forms of leadership, sharing diverse knowledge, and inspiring more cohesive collective action without reinforcing patterns of exclusion or disempowerment. Such approaches enhance a community’s ability to endure and recover from disruptions, ultimately building more holistic and lasting resilience in the face of climate change.

Conclusion

Nature’s own strategies for resilience (diversity, redundancy, flexibility, and cooperation) provide a powerful framework for both physical and social infrastructure that not only withstands climate disruptions but also helps communities recover and thrive in the face of climate change. 

Just as in nature, where plants, wildlife, fungi, and so many other beings play a part in the larger ecosystem, we each have a role to play in strengthening the resilience of our communities. As individuals, we can learn from nature’s lessons by engaging in local resilience-building actions. Here are some ideas for what you can do:

• Plant a diversity of native plants in your garden or lawn. 
• Advocate for natural infrastructure and policies that protect and restore natural habitats to provide diverse, redundant, and flexible solutions in the face of climate impacts. 
• Take the time to connect with your neighbors since strong relationships improve cooperation during climate emergencies and community planning.
• Get involved in mutual aid networks that foster interconnectedness within your community. 

By embracing these actions, we can each contribute to building stronger, more resilient communities that are better prepared to weather the challenges of a changing climate.

Join Us in Advancing Environmental Justice. Sign up for the Environmental Justice, Health, and Community Resilience and Revitalization Program’s quarterly newsletter and follow us on Instagram.