TY - JOUR

T1 - Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis

AU - Fischer, Jörn

AU - Farny, Steffen

AU - Pacheco-Romero, Manuel

AU - Folke, Carl

PY - 2025/11/25

Y1 - 2025/11/25

N2 - Both resilience and regeneration are relevantconcepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking hasled to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles ofgrowth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetaryboundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive,place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualisticrelationships between human and more-than-humanentities. This paper lays out similarities, differences andoverlaps between work on resilience and regeneration. Theconcept of regeneration emerged both independently ofresilience as well as playing a role within resiliencescholarship. We show that the literatures on resilience andregeneration have elaborated complementary ideas and canbe combined to derive guidance for improved governanceof social-ecological systems. Because of its explicit andproactive future-orientation, the concept of regenerationcould help boost nascent efforts to enact biospherestewardship and develop positive visions for how to re-build a world that is dominated by regenerative rather thandegenerative dynamics.

AB - Both resilience and regeneration are relevantconcepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking hasled to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles ofgrowth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetaryboundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive,place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualisticrelationships between human and more-than-humanentities. This paper lays out similarities, differences andoverlaps between work on resilience and regeneration. Theconcept of regeneration emerged both independently ofresilience as well as playing a role within resiliencescholarship. We show that the literatures on resilience andregeneration have elaborated complementary ideas and canbe combined to derive guidance for improved governanceof social-ecological systems. Because of its explicit andproactive future-orientation, the concept of regenerationcould help boost nascent efforts to enact biospherestewardship and develop positive visions for how to re-build a world that is dominated by regenerative rather thandegenerative dynamics.

U2 - 10.1007/s13280-025-02287-6

DO - 10.1007/s13280-025-02287-6

M3 - Journal articles

JO - Ambio

JF - Ambio

SN - 1654-7209

ER -