Governance pathways to resilience: emerging findings

This brief report brings together lessons from the first year of the Resilience Governance research programme, which is embedded within the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges (RNC) and is designed to develop a ‘toolkit’ of governance solutions. The programme is developing much needed new knowledge in three areas. It is developing:

• A new, comprehensive knowledge-base that will increase our understanding of the institutional architecture needed for New Zealand to be resilient
• The science about applying evidence-based practice and innovations needed to support resilient decision-making
• New research methods for investigating and addressing the institutional drivers of resilience

The programme moves beyond short-term considerations after hazard events to consider multiple hazard settings that are exacerbated by changing frequency of current risk hazard and extreme events, and/or combined with changing socio-economic, demographic, and political settings. In doing so we are learning to mine past experiences and rapidly developing international practice to develop more effective ways of achieving more resilient outcomes for New Zealand.