The Regrettable Resilience of 'Resilience'

This piece critiques the term "resilience" as it has become a dominant buzzword in international development, humanitarian aid, and climate policy. The author argues that "resilience" is dangerously vague: it can mean anything from community empowerment to neoliberal outsourcing of risk onto vulnerable people. By focusing on people's ability to bounce back from shocks, it lets governments and institutions off the hook for preventing those shocks in the first place. The essay is part of a long-running debate in development circles about how language shapes policy — similar to earlier critiques of words like "sustainability" or "capacity building." The author, Gordon Robert Berridge, is a career diplomat and scholar whose work often explores the unintended consequences of diplomatic and policy language.