The Resilience Hub has been created to share key messages about Resilience-based Management (RBM) and its benefits, promote effective implementation of RBM through policy and planning, facilitate networking and encourage cooperation among ICRI members.

Resilience-based management (RBM) is a management approach that uses knowledge of current and future drivers influencing ecosystem function to prioritize, implement, and adapt management actions that sustain ecosystems and human well-being (Mcleod et al. 2019). The main goal of RBM is to identify and prioritize management actions that enhance ecosystem resilience, which is the capacity of a system to absorb or withstand stressors so that the system maintains its structure and functions in the face of disturbance and change and can adapt to future challenges ¹.

Put simply, RBM aims to identify and prioritise management actions that build the reef’s capacity to withstand and recover from disturbances.

In practice, this means:

• understanding how a coral reef ecosystem is likely to respond to impacts and different scales and using this knowledge to adapt management actions
• protecting the processes and species that support its function and integrity
• reducing local threats to reefs 
• supporting ecosystem recovery processes
• supporting human dimensions, including by developing alternative livelihoods and building adaptive capacity

Why is Resilience-based Management Needed?

Applying RBM has several key benefits^[2]:

• Provides a way to manage reefs under future climate change scenarios.
• Allows managers to prioritize management actions that best address future threats to the socio-ecological system and encourages adaptation and transformation.
• Informs how resources like funding and staff time will be allocated to various strategies and projects based on identified threats to the socio-ecological system.
• Empowers local conservation practitioners by providing hope and validating the role and importance of local management actions and linking the well-being of coral reefs and local communities more closely.
• Serves as a vehicle to deliver on global commitments to climate change, such as CBD Aichi Target 10and 15, Paris Climate Agreement Article 7 and 8 , UN Sustainable Development Goals Target 14.2.