National Conference on Resilience

On 18-19 February 2010 Australia 21 convened its first national conference, at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The title of the conference was Shaping Australia’s Resilience: Policy development for uncertain futures. It was, as its title suggests, an exercise in exploring the applicability of a disciplined concept of “resilience”, a concept which emerges from the study of natural ecosystems, to other policy domains that deal with complex systems.

The core concept of resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same structure, function, identity and feedbacks. In other words, how much of a shock can the system absorb and continue to perform its characteristic functions.

We were fortunate to attract the participation of an impressive list of high level speakers.  The presentations may be accessed by visiting the Australia 21 website here.

Our thanks are due to the Australian National University, mecu credit union and the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department for their support in convening this conference.