The centrality of the systems approach: Regenerative development, resilience, and sustainability

The regenerative development paradigm represents a significant advancement over sustainability because it emphasizes the creation of positive feedback loops within systems. The body of research focused on coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and its accompanying concept of resilience rely on a systems perspective, as well. This chapter engages existing literature within each of these frameworks-regenerative development and CHANS, to explore ways through which they might be fruitfully combined. We argue that regenerative development holds significantly more promise for increasing resilience than current applications of sustainability in the face of rapid urbanization and increasing climate variability. This chapter argues that the greatest challenges for achievement of sustainability, resilience, and regenerative development are essentially the same. Regenerative development is the newest framework for achieving shared prosperity on a healthy planet. This dimension of sustainability is interpreted through the lens of either "weak sustainability" or "strong sustainability," where a strong sustainability lens assumes limited substitutability of various forms of capital and weak sustainability assumes quite a bit of flexibility and substitutability across the forms of capital. The complications of the international policy arena and the difficulty in adapting an expanding barrage of indicators to local contexts, led many practitioners and local authorities to turn to the resilience framework as an alternative to sustainable development. Sustainability and resilience are closely related in that they are both concerned with system functioning and the ability of relevant systems to maintain themselves.