CSP staff member, Mo Ryan, participates in the Resilience 2017 global meeting

Resilience 2017: Resilience Frontiers for Global Sustainability – the most recent iteration of the Resilience meeting held every three years – took place this August in Stockholm, Sweden. The meeting was a tour de force of creative exploration into the dynamics of social-ecological systems in turbulent times. With science, art, music, and movement interwoven throughout (e.g. see Tone Bjordam and Marten Scheffer’s remarkable art-science collaboration Critical Transitions), the plenaries and sessions reflected a rich, growing, and respectful dialogue among natural and social sciences and the humanities and creative arts.

These dialogues reflected many we have been having at CSP in recent years, on how to do science that goes beyond ideas to actively support the protection of living systems, human and non-human; on the role and forms of innovation in fostering positive change; on the means and challenges of bringing together art, science, and other ways of knowing in service to our collective creativity, social equity, and ultimately a vibrant biosphere. The emergent theme of the meeting reflected what we also see here at CSP: that seeing and engaging with the world in new ways requires the curiosity and courage to experiment our way through uncertainties towards new understandings of what we are, where we live, and the creative flows that connect the two.