Resilience and Sustainability Development

Informed action by the leaders of the future is critical for creating resilient communities. Preparing these future leaders through formal and informal education, research, and environmental/climate change programs that interweave local knowledge with the most current global science positions them to becomes the catalysts that propel community leaders to engage a wider range of possible futures. This chapter integrates findings from a SeaTrust Institute research project with the sustainable development goals in an analysis supporting dynamic and reconfigurable combinations of agents that promote the attributes of elasticity, future orientation, and motivation to address the high stakes choices for resilience to climate and environmental/social change. Author objectives in this chapter are to illustrate the optimum roles of youth in the process and what preparations and conditions are needed to instill and support youth in their ability to flip a process at the point of catastrophe to restore equilibrium and promote resilience.