Prof. Dr. Lina Volodzkienė,
Faculty of Public Governance and Business, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania
STRENGTHENING HUMAN AND SOCIETAL RESILIENCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
Recent crises have shown that the same shock can have very different consequences across societies. Some recover relatively quickly, while others face lasting losses in human development, widening inequalities, and new forms of vulnerability. These differences cannot be explained by economic prosperity alone. They raise a broader question of resilience: what enables societies not only to withstand disruption, but also to adapt, learn, and continue developing when uncertainty persists? This question is becoming increasingly important as multiple overlapping crises reinforce one another. Under such conditions, resilience depends not only on economic resources, but also on human capabilities and opportunities, access to essential services, social cohesion, and the capacity of institutions to respond to change.
Comparative analysis of country clusters shows that resilience is not evenly distributed. Yet the findings also show that being more developed does not automatically mean being more resilient. Inequality changes this picture considerably: when differences in the distribution of health, education, and income are taken into account, the actual gains in human development are significantly reduced, particularly in less developed country groups. At the same time, countries with the highest levels of human development tend to place greater pressure on the planet. This reveals an important paradox: development can strengthen the capacity to cope with some shocks while creating new vulnerabilities and risks for the future.
These findings point to resilience as a capacity that is built over time rather than activated only when a crisis occurs. This also changes the role of public policy. Policy cannot focus only on managing the consequences of crises; it needs to create the conditions for resilience before crises occur by addressing the foundational vulnerabilities outlined above. The challenge is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to prevent it from repeatedly turning into lasting human and societal vulnerability.
