Resilience: what it is and is not

Resilience" is becoming a buzzword. Sometimes it is open to interpretation and sometimes it is simply wrong. This misuse is detracting from an important and much-needed basis for managing agricultural regions, rivers, fisheries, natural ecosystems, cities, communities, people-all of which are complex systems. To help overcome the misunderstandings the following is a brief outline of what resilience is and what it is not, based on research over the past 50 years.