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In a world grappling with escalating crises—from conflict and pandemics to the dire impacts of climate change—never has resilience been more critical. Released today, the REF 2023 Synthesis Report sets a new benchmark as an unmatched guide to resilience-building methodologies and evidence.
The report recognises resilience as the ability to recover from and adapt to shocks and stresses, while enabling longer-term, systemic transformations, and offers actionable insights to inform investment, policy, and decision-making.
Through summarising the key discussions held at the REF in Cape Town, the report underscores the imperative to build on progress, address gaps, recognise various forms of evidence, and prioritise resilience as a collective goal.
Evidence of successful resilience implementation spans different sectors, stakeholders, and geographies – from the strengthening of small-holder farmers and grower communities’ resilience through radical cross-sector collaboration to the role of climate smart agriculture that combines seed technologies, soil fertility, and innovative financial tools for farmers. Taken together, the evidence detailed in the report showcases the increasing magnitude of resilience building initiatives globally.
However, scaling these evidence-based solutions requires a significant increase in finance. Annual spending on climate resilience alone is less than $50 billion, a mere fraction of the estimated $160 billion to $340 billion required. The private sector contributes just 2% to this insufficient pool, making resilience gains fragile and susceptible to setbacks like those witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To unlock further funding for resilience programming at the scale needed, the report concludes, evidence needs to be relevant and actionable. This also stands true for policy and decision-making; evidence must not only be rigorous and reliable, but also apply to the policies and decisions it seeks to influence. This will require collaborative action from donors, the private sector, policy makers, governments, community-based organisations and leaders, and research organisations to satisfy evidence needs, avoid duplication of efforts, and focus resources and investments.
In parallel, the report demonstrates the importance of diverse evidence – including that which is grounded in local experience and knowledge – to fortify global resilience efforts in the face of increasing threats and to connect local realities with global goals.
“Without equitable, radical collaboration and commitment to evidence that informs decision-making, policy, and investment,, we will continue to face barriers in protecting and supporting environments and communities that can flourish even in the face of change and uncertainty. The Resilience Evidence Forum was a significant moment for taking stock of where we are and where we need to go in strengthening resilience.” – Dr Nathanial Matthews, Chief Executive Officer, Global Resilience Partnership
Co-hosted by USAID and the Global Resilience Partnership, REF was the first such occasion in five years, convening more than 1,000 individuals from the private sector to universities to NGOs and local community groups. As well as a focus on how to further resilience programming, REF and the Synthesis Report highlights case studies and resilience success stories. These offer insight into the interventions that have worked and serve to guide future interventions. Examples of these success stories can be found in Appendix 1.
“With climate and other shocks becoming more frequent, severe and overlapping, there is an urgency to getting smarter, faster in terms of knowing what works when it comes to building resilience. At USAID we will continue to promote convenings like the Forum, to learn more about what others are doing and learning, and promote collaboration and partnership needed to drive equitable growth and well-being in an increasingly unpredictable world.”– Dina Esposito, Feed the Future Deputy Coordinator for Development and USAID Global Food Crisis Coordinator
“It is very important that the stories of resilience get told in the language of those impacted the most and that we learn to work with those stories, pull out what we need from that and don’t take a top-down approach to resilience evidence.” – Dr Shehnaaz Moosa, Director, SouthSouthNorth
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