Adapt or Die: Futureproofing the Twenty-first Century

This chapter focuses on futureproofing in the twenty-first century. Here, resilience is employed everywhere in the Western world as the futureproofing strategy of choice. In the light of 9/11, it became necessary to articulate how we manage and govern risk given that ‘we live, think and act in concepts that are historically obsolete but which nonetheless continue to govern our thinking and acting’. Although implementation methods differ depending on what is being made resilient, politicians constantly proclaim the need to enhance it, city planners and engineers are constantly being urged to adopt it, while individuals and communities are told they need to have more of it. Professional associations have rapidly incorporated resilience ideas into their existing frameworks of action for sustainability, risk management or emergency planning, in many cases extending their scale and ambition. Resilience has been further incorporated into the modus operandi of numerous policy communities and is almost ubiquitous in media portrayals and political sound bites of the latest crisis or disaster.

Stress-testing Economic Resilience

This chapter illuminates how the practices underpinning economic and financial resilience have progressed since the early 2000s crash. It draws on a series of vignettes from private- and public-sector organisations. From there, the chapter charts a journey from a conservative approach, which sought continuity and promoted ‘business as usual’ following the crisis, to a situation where complexity is increasingly embraced to cope with an unknown future. Here, while the fundamental aim of incorporating complexity is to be better able to predict the future in order to generate stable conditions in which to better manage risk, there is also a sense that things have changed and that we can never return to the headless days of the early 2000s. The journey of economic resilience reflects the broader evolution of resilience as a universally applied idea.

Introduction

This introductory chapter argues that we need to be more forward thinking in our response to risks and threats of all kinds. It points out that we should not be like army generals who, it is said, are always fighting the last war. Indeed, we must arm ourselves for new ones. Furthermore, a singular focus on preparing for past challenges is futile. The chapter asserts that what we should be doing is paying more attention to enhancing our ability to cope with a wide array of disruptive challenges that may present themselves in the future. These are the challenges that pose significant threats to our current way of living and to our very existence.