By Stephen Flood, editing team member of Creating Resilient Futures

This is a critical time for nature-society relations as the global community rises to the challenge of enhancing resilience and staying within planetary boundaries amid rapidly changing social, economic, political, and environmental conditions in the aftermath of Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic has generated unprecedented societal and economic challenges, upending conventional practices and behaviours. Due to the large-scale disruptions the pandemic has created the challenge of ‘building forward better’ and transitioning to a resilient future is now recognised as a priority at national, European and global scales. This moment of societal flux can provide the conditions with which to think outside the status quo and catalyse action to a more resilient future.

Social science is defined as the branch of science devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. I believe that social scientists are uniquely positioned to spearhead the urgent call to action. Our work encourages us to think across disciplines, strive to understand a dizzying array of perspectives and challenges, and make the connections necessary to overcome barriers and silos to generate social change. Social science is a broad church, with sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, human geographers, political scientists, psychologists, and historians all devoted to studying our societies. Social science helps us to understand our past, through understanding civilisation and culture, our present surroundings and societies, and to think about our futures. Never has our relationship with the planet and ourselves been more important in shaping our collective future and the lives of generations to come.

Grand challenges are formulations of global problems that can be addressed through coordinated and collaborative effort. Challenges have been identified in such areas such as food security, health, and climate action. Harnessing the power of individual and collective agency is at the core of generating the social change we need to overcome these challenges. The skills to understand our societies and relationships within them will be critical in unlocking transformative action. This will also call for the breaking down of silos and the forging of new connections. We will need substantial social change, and the time is now to empower social science and social scientists to make the connections and create the knowledge and understanding needed to help realise this transition to a more resilient and sustainable future.

The cascading impacts of Covid-19 have highlighted the close connectivity of our modern world in terms of trade, finance, geopolitics, infrastructure, ecosystems, and people. Universities and research institutions are increasingly taking note of the need to think across disciplines and make new connections to generate the knowledge and approaches necessary to fully understand the evolution of the human condition in the information age. The urgent need to shift our global society away from its unsustainable trajectory into catastrophic habitat degradation, species loss, and runaway climate change demands fresh thinking and fresh perspectives. Technological advances and applications, promotion of circular economy principles, and sweeping actions are needed, to not only reduce carbon emissions and protect the wide array of habitats and species at risk due to our actions, but also to change our culture to embed principles of sustainability and to reengage with the natural world. Social scientists are ready, willing, and well equipped to take on these challenges.

The open access Palgrave Macmillan edited volume “Creating Resilient Futures” critically examines the coherence building opportunity between Climate Change Adaptation, the Sustainable Development Goals and Disaster Risk Reduction agendas. The authors consider opportunities to address the global challenge of developing resilience, as an integrated development continuum instead of through independent and siloed agendas.

Stephen Flood is an environmental social science researcher working on various aspects of climate change adaptation, sustainability and resilience. He is based at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS),  Maynooth University.