Multi-layered social resilience: a new approach in mitigation research

Research on sustainable development tends to focus on risk and vulnerability. This article argues for a shift of emphasis from vulnerability to resilience. It develops a multi-layered social resilience framework emphasising the interactions between enabling factors and capacities operating at different levels of society. Enabling factors help to master threats by facilitating access to and transformation of capitals. Capacities lead social actors not only to cope with adverse conditions (reactive) but also to create responses (proactive) that increase competence and thus create pathways for mitigation. This approach redirects attention from managing risk to building resilience - an important prerequisite for sustainable development.